- Person
- James Franck
- Lived
- 1882–1964
- Field
- Atomic physics
- From
- German-American
The story
In the early twentieth century women were rare in German physics laboratories, and those who managed to enter often struggled to win paid positions. Only three women earned both a doctorate in physics and the habilitation, the qualification needed to teach at a German university, before the Second World War: Lise Meitner, Hedwig Kohn and Hertha Sponer. James Franck went out of his way to help.
In Berlin before the First World War he worked with Lise Meitner and the Swedish physicist Eva von Bahr, and after the war, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry, his young collaborators included Sponer and Thea Krüger. When he moved to Göttingen in 1920 as director of its Second Institute for Experimental Physics and was allowed two assistants, he brought Sponer with him from Berlin to fill one of the posts. She ran the institute’s spectroscopy laboratory, managed staff and taught laboratory courses while doing her own research, and in 1925 she earned her habilitation, becoming one of the first women to teach physics at a German university.
Sponer went on to a Rockefeller fellowship at Berkeley, where she developed the Birge–Sponer method for measuring how much energy it takes to break a molecule apart. After the Nazis forced her out of Göttingen, she became the first woman on the physics faculty of Duke University in 1936.
Franck’s support continued in exile. At Niels Bohr’s institute in Copenhagen in 1934, Bohr asked whether he would take on Hilde Levi, a young Jewish physicist who could no longer be hired in Germany. Franck did not know her personally, but he had read her thesis and rated it highly. She became his assistant, and they published two papers on the fluorescence of chlorophyll. Levi later brought the techniques of radiocarbon dating and autoradiography to Europe, and in 1951 helped date the Iron Age bog body known as the Grauballe Man.
Wikipedia’s account of Franck’s life notes that he promoted the careers of women in physics, notably Meitner, Sponer and Levi. In 1946 he married Sponer, by then a distinguished professor in her own right.
Why it matters
By opening doors for talented women, Franck helped widen who could take part in science and set an example for later generations.
About James Franck
Nobel physicist whose electron-collision experiment proved atoms have quantised energy levels; he resigned in protest in 1933 and later led the Franck Report against a surprise atomic attack.
More about James Franck
- The Franck–Condon principle explains how molecules glowIn 1925 James Franck proposed the mechanism, later developed by Edward Condon into the Franck–Condon principle, that governs how molecules absorb and emit light.
- James Franck made Göttingen a world centre of physicsFrom 1920 to 1933 James Franck and Max Born made Göttingen a world centre of quantum physics, training scientists such as Blackett, Condon and Oppenheimer.
- James Franck proved atoms take energy in fixed stepsIn 1914 James Franck and Gustav Hertz showed electrons lose exactly 4.9 electronvolts to mercury atoms, proving atomic energy is quantised; they won the 1925 Nobel Prize.
- James Franck devoted his later years to photosynthesisFrom the 1930s James Franck studied how plants turn light into chemical energy, heading Chicago's Photosynthesis Research Group until 1956.
- James Franck resigned in protest against Nazi lawsOn 17 April 1933 James Franck, exempt as a war veteran, resigned his Göttingen chair in protest, the first German academic to do so over the Nazi civil service law.
- The Franck Report urged a warning before the bombOn 11 June 1945 the Franck Report urged that the atomic bomb be demonstrated in an uninhabited place rather than used on Japanese cities without warning.
- Franck helped dismissed Jewish scientists find workBefore leaving Germany in November 1933, James Franck helped Frederick Lindemann of Oxford find posts abroad for Jewish scientists dismissed by the Nazis.
Sources
- James Franck Wikipedia
- Hertha Sponer Wikipedia
- Hilde Levi Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.