Professor James Franck, c mid-20th century

James Franck, born 26 August 1882, Hamburg, Germany. Died, 21 May 1964. Franck was a German-American physicist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925 with Gustav Hertz for the discovery of laws governing the impact of the electron on the atom. He was born to a Jewish family, and attended Wilhelm-Gymnasium in 1891. He then attended the University of Heidelberg in 1901, studying science. He met Max Born there, who he became good friends with. He moved to Frederick William University in Berlin to study physical sciences. He obtained his PhD in 1906. He then was called to mandatory military service. He met his wife, Ingrid Josephson, and married in 1907. They had two daughters. He sought to obtain habilitation so he could be employed to positions within Germany, and did so through publishing a large body of work in 1911. He worked with Gustav Hertz to create the Franck-Hertz experiment, for which they were later awarded the Nobel Prize. During WWI, he enlisted in the Army, and in 1915, he worked in the unit that would be utilising Haber's chlorine gas weapon. He was responsible for finding the locations these gases would be unleashed upon. Franck was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, for his work in the war, in 1915. He was then sent to the Russian front and got dysentery. He then joined Haber in Berlin to work on gas masks. He was awarded Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918. Haber offered Franck a job after the end of WWI. Max Born was offered a position in theoretical physics at the University of Göttingen, and wanted Franck to join him there. After the Nazi party came to power in 1933, the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, led to the retirement or dismissal of all Jewish civil servants, including scientists. As he was a veteran of WWI, Franck was exempt from automatic dismissal, but he resigned in 1933. He moved to the USA in 1935, and worked at John Hopkins University. He then moved to the University of Chicago in 1938. He became a naturalised citizen of the US in 1941, so he was not considered an enemy to the country when the US declared war on Germany in 1941. He then began work at Copenhagen, but when Germany invaded in 1940, he gave his Nobel Prize medal to George de Hevsey to keep safe. Franck was vocal against the use of the atomic bomb on Japan. He re-married in 1946 to Hertha Spooner, as his wife Ingrid had died in 1942. He died in 1964, aged 81. He was also awarded the Max Planck medal in 1951, and was elected as a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1944, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1964.