Short history of the Institute
The institute of theoretical physics in Göttingen can look back on important contributions to the development of modern natural sciences. This has been the case especially between 1925 and 1927, when Max Born and his younger assistants Werner Heisenberg and Pascal Jordan established considerable parts of quantum mechanics. Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation and Born’s probability interpretation of the field of matter waves have changed our understanding of nature in a radical way: they contain the inadequacy of our everyday vocabulary to describe processes in the microcosmos of atoms and elementary particles. Quantum mechanics is, however, in no way only an unworldly theory for natural philosophers without any impact on practical concerns of our lives. On the contrary, it builds for example the foundation of the understanding of electrical and magnetic processes in condensed matter, on which our whole information technology is based. Also, modern chemistry and biology are almost inconceivable without quantum mechanics. For their research in Göttingen, Max Born (1954) and Werner Heisenberg (1932) were rewarded with the Nobel Prize.
Photo galery (only INTERN)Scientific awards
2024
2023
The University Medal "In Publica Commoda" for Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius
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Membership "Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina" Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius
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2022
Born-Franck Dissertation award to Dr. Daniel Reichelt
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Max-Planck Medal to Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius
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2020
Born-Franck Dissertation award to Dr. Sebastian Päckel
For his thesis: "Topological and non-equilibrium superconductivity in low-dimensional strongly correlated quantum systems"
2019
Dr. Berliner- Dr. Ungewitter Award to Dr. Ludwig Schneider
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2018
Dr. Berliner- Dr. Ungewitter Award to Dr. Markus Schmitt
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2017
Wilhelm-Ostwald Medal of the Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig to Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius
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Heraeus Professorship (from October 2017 for 3 years) to Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius.
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Dr. Berliner- Dr. Ungewitter Award to Dr. Benjamin Lenz
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2010
Dr. Berliner- Dr. Ungewitter Award to Dr. Stephan Ulrich
For his thesis: "Aggregation and Gelation in Random Networks"2008
Max Planck Medal to Prof. Dr. Detlec Buchholz
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2006
Award to Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius Theoretical Physics (April 2006)
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The Lower Saxony minister of economy honoured her excellent scientific achievements in a discipline, in which only a few female scientists are working to this day. Zippelius has been since 1998 a professor for theoretical physics at the Georg August University of Göttingen. She is a member of the executive board of the German Society of Physicists and a member of the scientific committee.
Göttingen Tagesblatt (Göttingen daily Newspaper) at the 22nd of April 2006
2004
John H. Dillion Medal of the American Physical Society to Prof. Dr. Marcus Müller
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Dr. Berliner- Dr. Ungewitter Award to Dr. Henning Löwe
For his thesis: "Critical dynamics of gelling polymer solutions"2000
Dr. Berliner- Dr. Ungewitter Award to Dr. Henning Bostelmann
For his thesis: “Local Algebras and Operator products on a point” (translated from German)1998
Leibniz Price 1998 to Prof. Dr. Annette Zippelius
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1994
Max Planck Medal to Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Borcher
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A short overview through the history of theoretical physics in Göttingen |
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Woldemar Voigt |
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Max Born (approx. 1925) |
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Werner Heisenberg (approx. 1926) |
It was Heisenberg who could distill a mathematical formalism from the observed energy spectra of the atoms. It allowed to calculate observable quantities such as the frequency, the intensity and the polarization of radiation without the use of a model. Born realized what the underlying mathematical structure is (matrices, operators); he and his young assistants Heisenberg and Jordan developed matrix mechanics from this structure. In 1926, Schrödinger developed the so-called wave mechanics, which described matter waves in the sense of de Broglie.
On the other hand, Born proved that Schrödinger’s wave function is linked to a probability interpretation, which gives the probability of the position and the momentum of the particle. Born’s probability interpretation and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle have changed our understanding of nature in a revolutionary way.
Both Max Born and Werner Heisenberg got later rewarded with the Nobel price (1954 and 1932). Heisenberg (1933), Jordan (1942), Hund (1943), Born (1948) and Debye (1950) received the Max Planck Medal, that is the highest reward of the German Physical Society.
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Wave-mechanical pictures of the hydrogen atom
in four different excited states:
The brightness of a point shows the probability of observing an electron there.
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Maria Göppert-Mayer |
Reading the names of the former assistants and guests of the instute of theoretical physics in Göttingen as Pauli, Hückel, Nordheim, Fermi, London, Hund, Heitler, Fock, Wigner, Herzberg, Göppert-Mayer, Ehrenfest, Oppenheimer, Delbrück, Weißkopf, Bloch und Teller (among others that are not much less known either) makes one fathom the golden years of the institute. It is also important to mention the exchange with experimental physicists like Franck and Pohl, the fluid dynamicist Prandtl and mathematicians like Hilbert, Klein, Runge, and Weyl.
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Max Reich, Max Born, James Franck, Robert Pohl |
The rise to power of Nazism gave an end to this glorious era. Born was suspended, and deposed from his office in 1935. He was temporarily replaced by Fritz Sauter. Then, Richard Becker (in Göttingen 1936-1955) was the replacement by order. (He had previously applied to be the successor of Sommerfeld in Munich and was accepted.) His research on the magnetic and the plastic properties of metals and his teaching held the institute upright. His doctor student Richard Krömer was rewarded with the Nobel prize in 2000. Friedrich Hund, who had been the managing director of the institute since 1957, was able to establish the earlier international relevance of the institute. His discovery of the tunnel effect, Hund’s rule and the Hund-Mulliken theory allowed the efficient application of quantum mechanics on nuclear physics, molecule physics and chemistry. In the meantime, it was clear that the research in the twenties and the thirties got misused to make nuclear bombs threatening humanity itself. Thus, leading German scientists like Otto Hahn, Max von Laue and Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker and, out of Göttingen, Max Born und Werner Heisenberg gathered to make the Göttingen Manifesto, a statement against equipping the German army with atomic bombs and against the worldwide atomic armament altogether.
As a result of the discussions about the education emergency in the Federal Republic of Germany, the universities could expand. In the case of Theoretical physics in Göttingen, the expansion in the 60s was modest following Hund’s Motto “klein aber fein” (small but nice). Indeed, the institute changed from one ordinary professor (Hund) and one extraordinary professor (Helmut Steinwedel) to three ordinary ones with their assistants. These got occupied by Laue’s student Max Kohler, who worked on transport theory and alternative gravitational theories, and the later Max Planck Medal laureates Gerhart Lüders and Hans-Jürgen Borchers. Besides physics of condensed matter and, temporarily, nuclear physics, quantum field theory distinguished itself as another main research field. The Pauli-Lüders- (TCP-) theorem and the so-called Borchers classes of the axiomatic quantum field theory are examples of its high points. This field has been strengthened since the seventies by Helmut Reeh, Gerhard Hegerfeldt and Hansjörg Roos. In 1987, Arthur S. Wightman has been given an honorary doctorate.
The 70s and 80s were marked by a huge number of students, another expansion of the teaching staff to up to 8 professors and the rearrangement of the institute to a department with a rotating managing director. After the appointment of Hubert Goenner, the research fields have been expanded to include relativity theory. 2 to 3 regular Privatdozents who work in the institute contributed to research and teaching. Kurt Schönhammer expanded the theoretical condensed matter physics, and Annette Zippelius became together with Reiner Kree the center of the research focus “statistical physics”. She received the Leibniz Price and, in 2022, the Max Planck Medal. Because of the financial state of the federal state in the 90s, two professor chairs in the institute have been removed.
Succeeding Borchers, Detlev Buchholz continued the research in the field of mathematical and axiomatic quantum field theory. He was also awarded the Max Planck medal. Karl-Henning Rehren extended his research by conformal quantum field theory. At that time, the faculty established as an experimental expansion a new research focus, that is particle physics, in the II. Institute of Physics.
In 2003, the institute moved to the new building of the faculty at Friedrich-Hund-Platz located at the north campus. With the Bologna process and the switch to new degree programs, teaching required significant changes. In the same time, the institute became more and more international thanks to many doctorate students and Postdocs. Marcus Müller extended statistical physics to applications in biophysics. In the 2010s, a new theme of both classical and quantum physics came into light, namely “non-equilibrium”, which includes cosmology (Laura Covi), strongly correlated electrons (Stefan Kehrein, Thomas Pruschke, Fabian Heidrich-Meisner) and complex systems and active matter (Peter Sollich, Mathias Krüger). Peter Blöchel (TU Clausthal) gave regular lectures on theoretical condensed matter physics. Steffen Schumann moved from the II. Institute to the institute of theoretical physics to develop numerical methods for accelerator physics. Stefan Klumpp (Institute for the Dynamics of Complex Systems) became an associate member of the institute.
In June 2022, the institute celebrated its 100th anniversary with an academic conference.
jh, Last modified: Wed June 23 15:29:02 CEST 2022