Johannes Stark

Johannes Stark

Johannes Stark was a German physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 for discovering the Stark effect. This helped scientists learn more about how electric fields change the light from atoms.

Stark supported Adolf Hitler beginning in 1924. He led a group called Deutsche Physik, which did not want Jewish scientists to work in German universities or research centers. After World War II, he was found guilty of harming others, but the charge was later made less serious.

Education

Johannes Stark was born on 15 April 1874 in Schickenhof, which is now part of Freihung, Germany.

He went to school at the Gymnasium in Bayreuth and later in Regensburg. In 1894, he started studying at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He studied physics, mathematics, chemistry, and crystallography. In 1897, he earned his Ph.D. in Physics. His thesis was about the properties of soot. Stark worked at the university with Eugen von Lommel until 1900.

Career and research

In 1900, Johannes Stark began teaching at the University of Göttingen. He worked at several universities, including RWTH Aachen University, the University of Greifswald, and the University of Würzburg.

In 1919, Stark won the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering how electric fields can change starlight, known as the Stark effect. He also held important roles in science groups in Germany.

Stark asked a young scientist named Albert Einstein to write about a new idea called the principle of relativity. This idea later helped Einstein develop his famous theory of relativity.

Affiliation with Nazism

See also: Deutsche Physik

From 1924, Johannes Stark supported Adolf Hitler. During the time of the Nazi leaders, Stark tried to lead German science. He worked with another scientist named Philipp Lenard. They did not like ideas from scientists like Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg.

After World War II ended in 1947, Stark was found to have done wrong things during that time. He was later given a lighter punishment in 1949.

Personal life and death

Johannes Stark married Luise Uepler, and they had five children. After the Second World War, he used his Nobel Prize money to build a private laboratory on his estate in Upper Bavaria. There, he studied how light changes in an electric field.

Stark spent his last years at his estate, called Gut Eppenstatt, near Traunstein in Upper Bavaria. He died there on 21 June 1957 at the age of 83 and is buried at the mountain cemetery in Schönau am Königssee.

Awards and honors

Johannes Stark received many awards for his work. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics. He also earned prizes from the Vienna Academy of Sciences, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, and the Rome Academy. Later, in 1970, a crater on the far side of the Moon was named after him by the International Astronomical Union. But in 2020, this name was removed after more about his past became known.