Gregor Wentzel (17 February 1898 – 12 August 1978) was a German physicist known for development of quantum mechanics. Wentzel, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin developed the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation in 1926. In his early years, he contributed to X-ray spectroscopy, but then broadened out to make contributions to quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics, superconductivity and meson theory.[Mehra. Volume 1, Part 1, 2001, p. 356.][ Gregor Wentzel – ETH Bibliothek.][Jungnickel. Volume 2, 1990, p. 368.]
Biography
Early life and family
Gregor Wentzel was born in Düsseldorf, Germany, as the first of four children of Joseph and Anna Wentzel. He married Anna Lauretta Wielich
and his only child,
Donat Wentzel, was born in 1934. The family moved to the United States in 1948 until he and Anny returned to
Ascona in 1970.
Education and academia
Wentzel began his university education in mathematics and physics in 1916, at the University of Freiburg. During 1917 and 1918, he served in the armed forces during World War I. He then resumed his education at Freiburg until 1919, when he went to the University of Greifswald. In 1920, he went to the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) to study under Arnold Sommerfeld. Wentzel was awarded his doctorate in 1921
[Dissertation title: Zur Systematik der Röntgenspekten.] and completed his
Habilitation in 1922. He remained at LMU as a
Privatdozent until he was called to the University of Leipzig in 1926 as an extraordinarius professor of mathematical physics.
He became ordinarius professor in the Chair for Theoretical Physics, at the University of Zurich, when he succeeded Erwin Schrödinger, in 1928, the same year Wolfgang Pauli was appointed to the ETH Zurich. Together, Wentzel and Pauli built the reputation of Zurich as a center for theoretical physics. In 1948, Wentzel took a professorship at the University of Chicago. He retired in 1970 and went to spend his last years in Ascona, Switzerland.
Research
In 1926, Wentzel,
[Gregor Wentzel. Eine Verallgemeinerun der Quantenbedingungen für die Zwecke der Wellenmechanik, Z. Physik. 38 518–529 (1926). As cited in Mehra, 2001, Volume 5, Part 2, p. 961.] Hendrik Kramers,
[H. A. Kramers. Wellenmechanik und halbzahlige Quantisierung, Z. Physik. 39 828–840 (1926). As cieted in Mehra, 2001, Volume 5, Part 2, p. 920.] and Léon Brillouin
[Léon Brillouin. La mécanique ondulatoire de Schrödinger; une méthode générale de resolution par approximations successives, Comptes rendus (Paris) 183 24–26 (1926). As cieted in Mehra, 2001, Volume 5, Part 2, p. 882.] independently developed what became known as the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation, also known as the
WKB approximation,
classical approach, and
phase integral method.
[Schiff. 1968, p. 269.] Wentzel is also known for his contributions to photoemission
and scattering theory.
Late career work includes contributions to the discussion of gauge invariant theories of superconductivity.
Awards and honors
In 1975, Wentzel was awarded the Max Planck Medal.
Bibliography
Books
-
Gregor Wentzel. Einführung in die Quantentheorie der Wellenfelder. Franz Deuticke, 1943, 1946. Ann Arbor, Michigan: J.w. Edwards, 1943, 1946. (Translated by Charlotte Houtermans
[Charlotte Houtermans nee Riefenstahl was married to Fritz Houtermans.] and J. M. Jauch, with an Appendix by J. M. Jauch. Quantum Theory of Fields. Interscience, 1949. Dover, 2003.)
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Gregor Wentzel. Lectures on Strong Coupling Meson Theory at the University of Rochester. 1954.
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Gregor Wentzel and notes by K. K. Gupta. Lectures on Special Topics in Field Theory. Lectures on Mathematics and Physics: Physics. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 1957.
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Gregor Wentzel. Lectures on Special Topics in Quantum Mechanics. Lectures on Mathematics and Physics. Physics, 3. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 1965.
Articles
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Arnold Sommerfeld and Gregor Wentzel. Über reguläre und irreguläre Dublett, Zeitschrift für Physik 7 86–92 (1921) as cited in Sommerfeld Bibliography.
See also
Notes
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Jungnickel, Christa and Russell McCormmach. , Volume 1: The Torch of Mathematics, 1800 to 1870. University of Chicago Press, paper cover, 1990.
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Jungnickel, Christa and Russell McCormmach. Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, Volume 2: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870 to 1925. University of Chicago Press, Paper cover, 1990.
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Jagdish Mehra, and Helmut Rechenberg. The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 1 Part 1 The Quantum Theory of Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Sommerfeld 1900–1925: Its Foundation and the Rise of Its Difficulties. Springer, 2001.
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Mehra, Jagdish, and Helmut Rechenberg. The Historical Development of Quantum Theory. Volume 5 Erwin Schrödinger and the Rise of Wave Mechanics. Part 2 Schrödinger in Vienna and Zurich 1887–1925. Springer, 2001.
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Schiff, Leonard I. Quantum Mechanics. McGraw-Hill, 3rd edition, 1968.
Further reading
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Peter G. O. Freund, Charles J. Goebel, and Yoichiro Nambu, Editors. Quanta: Collection of Papers Dedicated to Gregor Wentzel. University of Chicago Press, 1970.
External links
