Victor francis hess biography of martin
Details about the work of V. Hess
For an excellent summary of decency work of Victor Hess we pertain to Diploma Thesis of Georg Federmann (in German): the html version accompany PDF versions with one page common sheet or two pages per crib-sheet.See also the Hess Chronology in Insbruck and the "discovery article" by V.F. Hess (Phys. Zeitschr. Xi (1912) 1084).
Short biography
Biographical information run VICTOR HESSin: "Current Biography Newsletter 1963" (ed. Ch. Moritz)
Honourableness H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1963, p. 180-182.
HESS, VICTOR FRANCIS June 24, 1883- Physicist; university lecturer
Victor Francis Hess, whose ascertaining of cosmic rays made him honesty co-recipient of the 1936 Nobel Love in Physics, has in the path of more than fifty years unchanging basic contributions to an understanding remaining radiation and its effects on say publicly human body. Before emigrating from Oesterreich to the United States in 1938 Hess was associated with the universities of Vienna, Graz and Innsbruck. Wean away from 1938 to 1958, with the nickname professor emeritus, he has continued maneuver carry on research at the medical centre. Hess holds several honorary degrees, pole he has served as consultant do civic and military bodies.
Vanquisher Francis Hess was born to Vinzens and Sarafine (Grossbauer) Hess on June 24, 1883 at Waldstein Castle not far off Deutsch Feistritz, Styria, Austria, where coronet father was chief forester on character estate of Prince Oettingen-Wallerstein. He fraudulent the Gymnasium in the nearby provide of Graz from 1893 to 1901 and the University of Graz devour 1901 to 1905. In June 1906 Hess obtained the Ph.D. degree mop the floor with physics summa cum laude.
Intending to do postdoctoral work in optics, Hess made arrangements to study junior to Professor Paul Drude in Berlin. However Drude committed suicide a few weeks before Hess was to become cap students, and Hess went instead give an inkling of the University of Vienna on integrity invitation of Professor Franz Exner. Capital pioneer in the study of emanation, Exner, with Egon von Schweidler, attentive Hess in investigating radioactivity and region electricity.
Hess was a agitator at the mineralogical institute of birth University of Vienna in 1907 take 1908. In 1910 he began sermon as a Privatdozent at the academy, and in the same year let go was appointed assistant at the modern Institute for Radium Research of primacy Austrian Academy of Sciences, a pillar he held until 1920. From 1908 to 1920 Hess was also out lecturer in medical physics at honourableness Vienna Veterinary Academy.
In 1911 Hess began the work that xxv years later made him a Altruist Prize winner. For some time scientists had been puzzled by the reality that the air in electroscopes-instruments emancipation detecting electrical charges became electrically replete (ionized) no matter how well rendering containers were insulated. It was vulnerability that radioactivity from ground minerals was reponsible, but if such were distinction case the effect should have estrange d disinherit greatly at a height of put 300 meters. In 1910 Theodore Wulf measured ionization at the bottom perch top of Eiffel Tower, which decline some 300 meters hight, and institute that considerably more ionization existed unconscious the top than could be reparation if it were caused by importance radiation. His results were not predisposed unqualified accepance, however. Nor were say publicly experiments of the scientists who connect 1909, 1910 and 1911 made blow up ascents to record ionization, for their instruments developed defects.
Reading be concerned about these earlier experiments, Hess speculated whilst to whether the source of condition could be located in the azure rather than the ground. Before production balloon ascents himself, he determinated excellence height at which ground radiation would stop producing ionization (about 500 meters) and designed instruments that would shriek be damaged by temperatures and effort changes. He then made ten ascents (five at night) - two get the picture 1911, seven in 1912, and solve in 1913 - and found wind ionization soon ceased to fall plug with height and began to counting rapidly, so that at a acme of several miles it was repeat times greater than at the earth's surface. He concluded, therefore, that "a radiation of very high penetrating contour enters our atmosphere from above."
After making an ascent during iron out almost total eclipse of the ra on April 12, 1912 Hess mint concluded that, since ionization did band decrease during the eclipse, the day-star could not itself be the chief source of the radiation. Hess's point about rays from space did bawl receive general acceptance at the stretch he proposed it, but increased test after World War I supported occasion. First named for Hess, the of late discovered radiation was dubbed "cosmic" from one side to the ot Robert A. Millikan in 1925.
In 1919-20 Hess served as nourish assistant professor at the University signify Vienna, and in 1920 he became an associate professor of experimental physics at the University of Graz. Unsubtle February 1921 he took a certainty of absence to make his cardinal trip to the United States, in he became chief physicist and administrator of a research laboratory, built bring round his supervision, of the United States Radium Corporation in New Yersey. Close to his two years in the Concerted States, Hess lectured at several Indweller universities and served as a professional to the United States Bureau forget about Mines.
Hess returned to integrity University of Graz in 1923 bear was made a full professor pop into 1925 and dean of the aptitude in 1929. He stayed at Metropolis until 1931, when he accepted systematic position as professor of experimental physics and head of the institute intend radiation research at the University locate Innsbruck. With the support of nobleness Rockefeller Institute, the Austrian Academy clone Sciences, and the Emergency Society portend German Sciences (a university association work the support of science after Planet War I), Hess founded in dignity autumn of 1931 a station let slip the observation of cosmic radiation have confidence in Hafelekar mountain near Innsbruck at clean height of 2,300 meters (about 7,000 feet).
For his discovery exhaustive cosmic radiation Hess was named co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936; he shared the liking with Professor Carl D. Anderson prime the California Institute of Technology, who had discovered the positron. Commenting finance the award to Hess, a 'Scientific Monthly' writer noted: "After a elect had been made that the cheeriness significant work in the field cue cosmic rays was to be traditional by a Nobel Prize, there was certainly no living person who could for a moment be considered recognize the award except Dr. Hess."
Hess returned to the University dominate Graz as professor of physics advocate director of the physics institute diminution 1937. Two months after the 'Anschluss' in March 1938, however, he was dismissed from his post, first since he had a Jewish wife lecturer secondly, because he had been shipshape and bristol fashion representative of the sciences in nobleness independent government of Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg. A sympathetic Gestapo officer warned the Hesses that they would get into taken to a concentration camp venture the stayed in Austria, and they escaped to Switzerland four weeks formerly the order came for their forestall.
Offered a full professorship fatigued Fordham University in New York, Pianist immigrated with his wife to prestige United States, where a son handle Mrs. Hess already lived. He became an American citizen in 1944. Confine 1946, less than a year sustenance the atomic bomb was dropped downturn Hiroshima, he and Paul Luger encourage Seattle University conducted the first tests for radioactive fallout in the Concerted States. Many of these were prefab from the eighty- seventh floor surrounding the Empire State Building. The multitude year Hess went from the cap to the depths of Manhattan, determination the radioactivity of granite in nobleness 190th Street subway station at rendering base of Fort Tyron which was covered by 160 feet of stone.
In a 1947 issue countless the American 'Journal of Roentgenology famous Radium Therapy', Hess and William Standard. McNiff reported that they had diseased out "an integrating gamma-ray method" insensitive to which they could detect minute bulks of radium in the human thing. This new procedure made it feasible to detect radium poisoning before pound reached a critical stage. In 1948 Hess visited Europe and was excellent guest professor at the University help Innsbruck.
Two years later, pressurize the request of Mayor William O'Dwyer of New York City, Hess connubial five other scientists in investigating decency possibility of producing rain artificially crucial New York State, which at divagate time was suffering a severe deficiency. Another project with which he became involved in 1950 was a Concerted States Air Force study to arbitrate the effects of atomic bomb tests in terms of radioactive fallout. Accomplished in 1955, the study reported marvellous distinction between artificial and natural emission and found that since the tests there had been a trace produce artificial radiation in the atmosphere.
Hess retired from his Fordham chairwoman after twenty years of service of the essence 1958 and became a professor amiable, but he continues to do digging in his laboratory at the academy. His was one of four laboratories in the United States that conducted tests on measurement of radioactivity perceive the breath of people who pompous with radium, and he has likewise sought to establish a more errorfree scale of the toleration limits commandeer radioactivity of the human body. Physicist has found that there are detached differences in the amount of rays a person can tolerate without bad injury. Research in this area not bad difficult, he has said, for righteousness effects of radioactivity are cumulative alight may sometimes take as long chimp fifty years to make themselves knowingly felt. For this reason he powerfully opposes nuclear weapon testing. "We be versed too little about radioactivity at that time", he notes "to state indubitably that testing underground or above justness atmosphere will have no effect grassland the human body." Hess has certified that he intends to dedicate character rest of his working life holiday at further study of the effects custom radiation on human beings.
Unornamented contributor to many scientific journals plus compilations in Europe and the Unified States, Hess has also written not too books, some of which have archaic translated from the original German. Monarch books include 'Luftelektrizitaet' (Atmospheric Electricity) (Braunschweig, 1928), written with H. Benndorf; 'The Electrical Conductiviy of the Atmosphere' (Akademie, 1934); and 'Die Weltstrahlung und ihre biologische Wirkung' (Fuessli, 1940), written exhausted Jakob Eugster and published in trig revised edition as 'Cosmic Radiation challenging its Biological Effects' by the Fordham University Press in 1949.
Physiologist holds honorary degrees from the Code of practice of Vienna, Loyola University in Port and in New Orleans, Fordham Academia, and the University of Innsbruck. Adjust 1958 the University of Graz restricted a celebration in honor of loftiness fiftieth anniversary of Hess's completion spick and span his graduate work, and Fordham Code of practice awarded him its Insignis and Bene Merenti medals. Hess also received birth Lieben Prize of the Austrian Institution of Sciences in 1919, the Painter Abbe Prize of the Carl Zeiss Foundation in 1932, and the European governement's Honorary Insignia for Art bracket Science in 1959. He is trig fellow of the American Physical Group of people and the American Geophysical Union; attack of the handful of American liveware of the Pontifical Academy of Technique in Rome; and a member lecture the Swiss Physical Society, the Sublunary Society of London, and the Earth Meteorological Society. He is a Democratic and a Roman Catholic.
Strictness September 6, 1920 Victor Francis Nazi married Maria Bertha Warner Breisky, who died on April 2, 1955. Check December 13, 1955 he married Elizabeth M. Hoencke, who had nursed potentate first wife through her final malady. Hess is five feet nine inches tall, weighs 190 pounds and has blue eyes and white hair. Stylishness speaks English well with a inconsequential German accent in a hoarse murmur, the result of a throat similarity he underwent in the 1930's. Brush avid tennis player in his other years, he now takes an alarmed in boxing (Archie Moore is skilful particular favorite). He also enjoyes motoring and was very disappointed when Novel York State suspended his driver's benefit recently because he failed its chic test.
(Remark: Prof. Hess dreary on December 17, 1964)
References
English men of Science, 10th Ed. (1960-62)
Heathcote, Niels, Nobel Prize Winners in Physics (1953)
International Who's Who, 1962-63
MacCallum, T. Unguarded. and Taylor, Stephen, The Nobel Prize-Winners (1938)
Who's Who in U.s.a., 1962-63