Karl Herzfeld

Austrian American physicist (1892–1978)

Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld (February 24, 1892 – June 3, 1978) was an Austrian American physicist.

Herzfeld was born in Vienna during the reign of the Habsburgs over the Austro Hungarian Empire. "He came from a prominent, recently assimilated Jewish family." His father was a physician and ordinarius professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Vienna. His mother, Camilla née Herzog, was the daughter of a newspaper publisher and sister of the organic chemist R. O. Herzog. Herzfeld's doctoral thesis applied statistical mechanics to a gas of free electrons as a model for a theory of metals. By the time he received his doctorate, he already had published six scientific papers. In one of them, he attempted to derive a model of the hydrogen atom. This paper was published in 1912, shortly before Niels Bohr submitted his first paper on the Bohr model of the hydrogen atom. Upon receipt of his doctorate, Herzfeld volunteered for service in the Austro Hungarian Army. World War I broke out shortly thereafter and he served until 1918, rising to the rank of first lieutenant. Herzfeld's thesis advisor Hasenöhrl was called to serve during World War I and was killed at the front. During his tenure in the military, Herzfeld published six papers on statistical mechanics applied to problems in physics and chemistry, especially to the structure of matter – gases, liquids, and solids. who was ordinarius professor for theoretical physics and director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics – a prominent organization for the study of atomic and molecular structure. From 1925, until he left LMU in 1926, he was extraordinarius professor of theoretical physics. During this time, Linus Pauling did postdoctoral studies with him, and he was the thesis advisor for Walter Heitler, who got his doctorate in 1926. In 1925, Herzfeld published his book on kinetic theory and statistical mechanics, which became a graduate level textbook in German speaking universities. considered the role of molecular vibrations in the transfer of energy between ultrasonic waves and gas molecules. At Johns Hopkins, Herzfeld worked with other European colleagues on the University's physics faculty, namely James Franck and Maria Goeppert Mayer, who were awarded Nobel Prizes in Physics in 1925 and 1963, respectively. Franck came to Johns Hopkins after he left Germany in 1933, where he had been ordinarius professor of experimental physics and director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the University of Göttingen and a close colleague of Max Born, who was director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at Göttingen. Goeppert Mayer was a student of Born, and she joined the Johns Hopkins faculty in 1931. Goeppert Mayer and Herzfeld published articles on states of aggregation and nuclear fusion reactions. Herzfeld coauthored articles with Franck on photosynthesis, one being after they had both left Johns Hopkins. John Archibald Wheeler, who became a prominent physicist, took his PhD under Herzfeld in 1933. One of his doctoral students at Catholic was Virginia Griffing, the first woman on the faculty of the university's physics department. In 1959, Herzfeld and Theodore A. Litovitz collaborated on a book, in part, summarizing Herzfeld's thinking on ultrasonics over the 30 plus years since his article with F. O. Rice. In 1966, Herzfeld published a review article summarizing 50 years of developments in physical ultrasonics.

In 1938, Herzfeld married Regina Flannery, who was an instructor of anthropology at Catholic University; by the time she retired in 1970, she had risen to professor and the first woman to head that department.

Karl F. Herzfeld Über ein Atommodell, das die Balmer'sche Wasserstoffserie aussendet, Sitzungsberichte der Koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften Wien 121(2a):593–601 (1912)
Karl F. Herzfeld Zur Elektronentheorie der Metalle, Annalen der Physik (4) 41:27–52 [Herzfeld's doctoral dissertation at Vienna University under the direction of Professor Friedrich Hasenöhrl] (1913)
Karl F. Herzfeld On Atomic Properties Which Make an Element a Metal, Physical Review 29:701–705 (1927)
Karl F. Herzfeld and F. O. Rice Dispersion and absorption of high frequency sound waves, Physical Review 31:691–95 (1928)
Karl F. Herzfeld and Maria Goeppert Mayer On the states of aggregation, Journal of Chemical Physics 2:38–45 (1934)
F. O. Rice and Karl F. Herzfeld The Thermal Decomposition of Organic Compounds from the Standpoint of Free Radicals. VI. The Mechanism of Some Chain Reactions',' J. Am. Chem. Soc. 56:284–289 (1934)
Karl F. Herzfeld and M. Göppert Mayer On the theory of fusion, Phys. Rev. 46:995–1001 (1935)
Karl F. Herzfeld and James Franck An attempted theory of photosynthesis, J. Chem. Phys. 5:237–51 (1937)
Karl F. Herzfeld and James Franck Contributions to a theory of photosynthesis, J. Phys. Chem. 45:978–1025 (1941)
Karl F. Herzfeld Electron levels in polyatomic molecules having resonating double bonds, Chemical Reviews 41:233–56 (1947)
Karl F. Herzfeld Nodal surfaces in molecular wave functions Review of Modern Physics 21:527–30 (1949)
Karl F. Herzfeld Fifty Years of Physical Ultrasonics, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America Volume 39, Issue 5A, pp. 813–825, The Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C. (Received 27 July 1965)