Biography of Max Born

How many crystals

11 December 1882
January 5, 1970
Max Born was born on 11 December 1882 in Breslau, day in Poland, from Gustav Born, Professor of Anatomy and embrionologia, and Margarete Kauffmann, wife of the Professor, a member of the Silesian family of industrialists. Max attended the König Wilhelm's Gymnasium at Breslau and he continued his studies at the universities of Breslau, Heidelberg, Zurich and Göttingen. In his last period as a student focuses in the study of mathematics following the teachings of Hilbert, Minkowski and Runge, considered the fathers of matrix algebra and modern, giving due regard also to physics, thanks to the availability of his teacher, Voigt. Just 24 years it was awarded the prize of the Faculty of philosophy at the University of Göttingen for his study on the stability of elastic tapes and cables, graduating the following year with a thesis on the same basis as the source argument of the prize. Max Born then moves to Cambridge for a short period under j. j. Thomson, recovering the way to Breslau the following year: here working for two years with physicists Lummer and Pringsheim, studying the theory of relativity. On the basis of the validity of the arguments of one of the writings of the young Born, Minkowski invited him to collaborate with him at the Institute in Göttingen but a few months after the arrival of the young, Minkoski dies, during the cold winter of 1909. Hence the task not easy to conclude and manage the writings in the field of Physics of Minkowski and to publish some. Based on his studies on the relativistic electron, Born you "earn" a professorship in Göttingen, accepting the invitation as a guest professor by Michelson (who along with Morley had made important experiments on the electrons) in Chicago in 1912, also collaborating with the latter at some experiments on the spectrograph.
After returning from this experience, in 1913, he married Hedwig Ehrenberg, who throughout his life will give him three children. In 1915 he was asked to join Max Planck to Berlin University as extraordinary Professor, but Born is called to arms and is sent at a scientific Department of the army; here works on physical aspects of sound bands and studies, publishing the results, the theory of crystals. In 1919, at the end of the great war, Born was appointed Professor at the University of Frankfurt, where he was put at your disposal a large workshop, in which experiencing his research with his assistant Otto Stern. In 1921 gets a professorship even in Göttingen, where he remained for over twelve years, except a brief period in the United States; Born in these years produces his most important works: a revised, corrected and improved on crystals, followed by a series of studies on quantum theory. Among his collaborators include several physicists who earn then great fame, among which it is worth mentioning Pauli, Heisenberg, Jordan, Fermi, Dirac, Hund, Hylleraas, Weisskopf, Oppenheimer, Joseph Mayer and Maria Goeppert-Mayer. During the period between 1925 and 1926 Born publishes, with support of Heisenberg and Jordan, his studies on quantum mechanics (matrix mechanics), and then shortly after, his studies on the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics. Like many German scientists, Born in 1933 is forced to emigrate; He was invited to Cambridge, where he taught for three years; at this time his main field of research is nonlinear electrodynamics, topic for which develops a partnership with Infeld. During the winter of 1935 and 1936 Born spends six months in Bangalore at the Indian Institute of science, where he collaborated with Sir C.V. Raman and his students. He was appointed Professor of natural philosophy in Edinburgh in 1936, where he worked until he retired from teaching in 1953. After being named an honorary citizen of Göttingen, Max Born in 1954 is awarded the Nobel Prize in physics, for statistical studies on wave functions. In 1959 was awarded the Great Cross of merit and the star of the order of merit by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. She spent a quiet retirement period in Bad Pyrmont, a small spa town, before he died on January 5, 1970 in his beloved Göttingen.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.