Johannes Stark

Johannes Stark was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 for his discovery of the Stark effect. His work helped scientists understand how electric fields affect the light given off by atoms.

Stark supported Adolf Hitler starting in 1924. He was a leader in a movement called Deutsche Physik, which wanted to keep Jewish scientists out of German universities and research centers. After World War II, a court found him guilty of serious actions against others, but this decision was changed to a lesser charge a few years later.

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, written under Eugen von Lommel, was about the properties of soot. Stark continued working at the university as an assistant to von Lommel until 1900.

Career and research

In 1900, Johannes Stark started 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 the light from stars, known as the Stark effect. He also held important positions in science organizations in Germany.

Stark asked a young scientist named Albert Einstein to write an article 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 together. After the Second World War, he used his Nobel Prize money to build a private laboratory on his country estate in Upper Bavaria. There, he studied how light changes in an electric field.

Stark spent his final years at his estate, called Gut Eppenstatt, near Traunstein in Upper Bavaria. He passed away 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 and also earned prizes from the Vienna Academy of Sciences, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences, and the Rome Academy. Later, in 1970, he was honored with a crater on the far side of the Moon by the International Astronomical Union. However, this name was removed in 2020 after his past actions became more widely known.