Gregor Wentzel

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.

Gregor Wentzel
Born	(1898-02-17)17 February 1898 Düsseldorf, German Empire
Died	12 August 1978(1978-08-12) (aged 80) Ascona, Switzerland
Alma mater	University of Greifswald Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Known for	Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation
Children	Donat
Awards	Max Planck Medal (1975)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich University of Leipzig University of Zurich University of Chicago
Doctoral advisor	Arnold Sommerfeld
Doctoral students	Valentine Bargmann Markus Fierz Res Jost Nicholas Kemmer Felix Villars

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, Switzerland 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 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, Hendrik Kramers, and Léon Brillouin independently developed what became known as the Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin approximation, also known as the WKB approximation, classical approach, and phase integral method. 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 and J. M. Jauch, with an Appendix by J. M. Jauch. Quantum Theory of Fields. Interscience, 1949. Dover, 2003.) ISBN 0-486-43245-9
• Gregor Wentzel. Lectures on Strong Coupling Meson Theory at the University of Rochester. 1954.
• 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.
• Gregor Wentzel. Lectures on Special Topics in Quantum Mechanics. Lectures on Mathematics and Physics. Physics, 3. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 1965.

Articles

• Arnold Sommerfeld and Gregor Wentzel. Über reguläre und irreguläre Dublett, Zeitschrift für Physik 7 86–92 (1921) as cited in Sommerfeld Bibliography.

See also

• Elastic recoil detection
• Shape resonance

Notes

1. Mehra. Volume 1, Part 1, 2001, p. 356.
2. Gregor Wentzel Archived 2009-11-09 at the Wayback Machine – ETH Bibliothek.
3. Jungnickel. Volume 2, 1990, p. 368.
4. Telegdi, V. L. (November 1978). "Obituary: Gregor Wentzel". Physics Today. 31 (11): 85–86. Bibcode:1978PhT....31k..85T. doi:10.1063/1.2994844. Archived from the original on 2013-09-27.
5. "Wentzel, Gregor".
6. "Gregor Wentzel – NAS". www.nasonline.org/.
7. Dissertation title: Zur Systematik der Röntgenspekten.
8. 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.
9. H. A. Kramers. Wellenmechanik und halbzahlige Quantisierung, Z. Physik. 39 828–840 (1926). As cieted in Mehra, 2001, Volume 5, Part 2, p. 920.
10. 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.
11. Schiff. 1968, p. 269.
12. Wentzel, Gregor (1926). "Zur Theorie des photoelektrischen Effekts". Z. Physik. 40 (8): 574–589. Bibcode:1926ZPhy...40..574W. doi:10.1007/BF01390456.
13. Wentzel, Gregor (1926). "Zwei Bemerkungen über die Zerstreuung korpuskularer Strahlen als Beugungserscheinung". Z. Phys. 40 (8): 590–593. Bibcode:1926ZPhy...40..590W. doi:10.1007/BF01390457.
14. Wentzel, Gregor (1959). "Problem of Gauge Invariance in the Theory of the Meissner Effect". Physical Review Letters. 2 (2): 33–34. Bibcode:1959PhRvL...2...33W. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.2.33.
15. Charlotte Houtermans nee Riefenstahl was married to Fritz Houtermans.

Further reading

• Peter G. O. Freund, Charles J. Goebel, and Yoichiro Nambu, Editors. Quanta: Collection of Papers Dedicated to Gregor Wentzel. University of Chicago Press, 1970.