Born, Max

(1882-1970)

   physicist; a key player in the development of quantum mechanics. A native of Breslau (now Poland s Wroclaw), he began university studies in his home city. Moving to Gottingen in 1904 to study with David Hilbert, he took a doctorate in 1907 and then taught and did research variously at Breslau, Gottingen, and Cambridge. A visiting professorship at Chi-cago in 1912 was followed by independent research and then appointment in 1915 as ausserordentlicher Professor at Berlin.* Relieving Max Planck* of lec-ture obligations, he became full professor and spent four years working with Planck and Albert Einstein.* During 1919-1921 he swapped positions with Max von Laue* and taught at Frankfurt.

   When Born was proffered Gottingen's theoretical physics chair in 1921, he persuaded Carl Becker,* Prussian Cultural Minister, to jointly appoint James Franck.* With Hilbert, Franck, Werner Heisenberg,* and Robert Pohl, he was soon absorbed by quantum theory. Among his collaborators were Enrico Fermi of Italy, Victor Weisskopf of Vienna, Eugen Wigner of Hungary, and Robert Oppenheimer of the United States. By 1930, with his work internationally rec-ognized, gifted researchers were arriving to hone their skills at Gottingen's "Born School. But Born was of Jewish ancestry. On 25 April 1933, as stip-ulated by the Nazis' Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums (Law for the restoration of the professional civil service), he was dismissed. Until then, he wrote later to Einstein, "I had never especially considered myself Jew-ish. Naturally, I now feel it very strongly. He left Germany in May, taught for two years at Cambridge, and then became Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler; DSB, vol. 15, suppl. 1.