James Franck was born on August
26, 1882, in Hamburg, Germany. After attending the Wilhelm
Gymnasium there, he studied mainly chemistry for a year at the
University
of Heidelberg, and then studied physics at the University of
Berlin, where his principal tutors were Emil Warburg and Paul
Drude. He received his Ph.D. at Berlin in 1906 under Warburg, and
after a short period as an assistant in Frankfurt-am-Main, he
returned to Berlin to become assistant to Heinrich Rubens. In
1911, he obtained the "venia legendi" for physics to lecture at
the University of Berlin, and remained there until 1918 (with
time out for the war in which he was awarded the Iron Cross,
first class) as a member of the physics faculty having achieved
the rank of associate professor.
After World War I, he was appointed member and Head of the
Physics Division in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical
Chemistry at Berlin-Dahlem, which was at that time under the
chairmanship of Fritz Haber. In 1920, Franck became Professor of
Experimental Physics and Director of the Second Institute for
Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen. During
the period 1920-1933, when Göttingen became an important
center for quantum physics, Franck was closely cooperating with
Max Born, who then headed the
Institute for Theoretical Physics. It was in Göttingen that
Franck revealed himself as a highly gifted tutor, gathering
around him and inspiring a circle of students and collaborators
(among them: Blackett, Condon, Kopfermann, Kroebel,
Maier-Leibnitz, Oppenheimer, and Rabinovich, to mention some of
them), who in later years were to be renowned in their own
fields.
After the Nazi regime assumed power in Germany, Franck and his
family moved to Baltimore, U.S.A., where he had been invited to
lecture as Speyer Professor at Johns Hopkins University. He then went to
Copenhagen, Denmark, as a guest professor for a year. In 1935, he
returned to the United States as Professor of Physics at Johns
Hopkins University, leaving there in 1938 to accept a
professorship in physical chemistry at the University of
Chicago. During World War II Franck served as Director of the
Chemistry Division of The Metallurgical Laboratory at the
University of Chicago, which was the center of the Manhattan
District's Project.
In 1947, at the age of 65, Franck was named professor emeritus at
the University of Chicago, but he continued to work at the
University as Head of the Photosynthesis Research Group until
1956.
While in Berlin Professor Franck's main field of investigation
was the kinetics of electrons, atoms, and molecules. His initial
researches dealt with the conduction of electricity through gases
(the mobility of ions in gases). Later, together with Hertz, he
investigated the behaviour of free electrons in various gases -
in particular the inelastic impacts of electrons upon atomswork
which ultimately led to the experimental proof of some of the
basic concepts of Bohr's atomic theory, and for which they were
awarded the Nobel Prize, for 1925. Franck's other investigations,
many of which were carried out with collaborators and students,
were also dedicated to problems of atomic physics - those on the
exchange of energy of excited atoms (impacts of the second type,
photochemical researches), and optical problems connected with
elementary processes during chemical reactions.
During his period at Göttingen most of his studies were
dedicated to the fluorescence of gases and vapours. In 1925, he
proposed a mechanism to explain his observations of the
photochemical dissociation of iodine molecules. Electronic
transitions from a normal to a higher vibrational state occur so
rapidly, he suggested, that the position and momenta of the
nuclei undergo no appreciable change in the process. This
proposed mechanism was later expanded by E. U. Condon to a theory
permitting the prediction of mostfavoured vibrational transitions
in a band system, and the concept has since been known as the
Franck-Condon principle.
Mention should be made of Professor Franck's courage in following
what was morally right. He was one of the first who openly
demonstrated against the issue of racial laws in Germany, and he
resigned from the University of Göttingen in 1933 as a personal
protest against the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler. Later, in his
second homeland, his moral courage was again evident when in 1945
(two months before Hiroshima) he joined with a group of atomic
scientists in preparing the so-called "Franck Report" to the War
Department, urging an open demonstration of the atomic bomb in
some uninhabited locality as an alternative to the military
decision to use the weapon without warning in the war against
Japan. This report, although failing to attain its main
objective, still stands as a monument to the rejection by
scientists of the use of science in works of destruction.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Professor Franck received the
1951 Max Planck Medal of the German Physical Society, and he was
honoured, in 1953, by the university town of Göttingen,
which named him an honorary citizen. In 1955, he received the
Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his work
on photosynthesis, a subject with which he had become
increasingly preoccupied during his years in the United States.
In 1964, Professor Franck was elected as a Foreign Member of the
Royal Society, London, for his contribution to the understanding
of exchanges of energy in electron collisions, to the
interpretation of molecular spectra, and to problems of
photosynthesis.
Franck was first married (1911) to Ingrid Josefson, of
Göteborg, Sweden, and had two daughters, Dagmar and Lisa.
Some years after the death of his first wife, he was married
(1946) to Hertha Sponer, Professor of Physics at Duke University
in Durham, North Carolina (U.S.A.).
Professor Franck died in Germany on May 21, 1964, while visiting
in Göttingen.
From Nobel Lectures, Physics 1922-1941, Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1965
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and first published in the book series Les Prix Nobel. It was later edited and republished in Nobel Lectures. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1925
James Franck
