James Franck - Education and Career, Awards and Honors, Further information

Physicist, born in Hamburg, N Germany. Professor of physics at Göttingen (1920), he worked with Gustav Hertz on quantized energy absorption in molecules, for which they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1925. He emigrated to the USA in 1935, became professor of physical chemistry at Chicago (1938–49), and worked on the development of the atomic bomb in World War 2. He headed the Franck Committee of scientists who urged that the bomb should not be used, but could be detonated in an unpopulated area to demonstrate its power.

James Franck (August 26, 1882 – May 21, 1964),born in Hamburg, was a German-born physicist and Nobel laureate.

Education and Career

Franck completed his Ph.D. in 1906 and received his venia legendi for physics in 1911, both at the University of Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of extraordinarius professor. After World War I, in which he served and was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. While at the university, he worked on quantum physics with Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.

In 1925, Franck received the Nobel Prize in Physics, mostly for his work in 1912-1914 which included the Franck-Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the Bohr model of the atom.

In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he left his post in Germany and continued his research in the United States, first in Baltimore and then, after a year in Denmark, in Chicago.

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck in aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.

Awards and Honors

1925 Nobel Prize in Physics The award was shared with Gustav Ludwig Hertz, and it was for their discovery of the laws governing the impact of electrons on atoms.

Further information

http://nobelprize.org/physics/laureates/1925/franck-bio.html biography, on the Nobel website Annotated bibliography for James Franck from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues