Franck completed his PhD in 1906 and received his
venia legendi for physics in 1911, both at the
University of Berlin, where he lectured and taught until 1918, having reached the position of extraordinarius professor. After
World War I, in which he served and was awarded the
Iron Cross 1st Class, Franck became the Head of the Physics Division of the
Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft for Physical Chemistry. In 1920, Franck became ordinarius professor of experimental physics and Director of the Second Institute for Experimental Physics at the
University of Göttingen. While at the university, he worked on
quantum physics with
Max Born, who was Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.
In 1925, Franck received the
Nobel Prize in Physics, mostly for his work in 1912-1914 which included the
Franck-Hertz experiment, an important confirmation of the
Bohr model of the
atom.
In 1933, after the
Nazis came to power, he left his post in Germany and continued his research in the United States, first at the
Johns Hopkins University in
Baltimore and then, after a year in
Denmark, in
Chicago. This is where he became involved in the
Manhattan Project during
World War II; he was Director of the Chemistry Division of the
Metallurgical Laboratory at the
University of Chicago. He was also the chairman of the Committee on Political and Social Problems regarding the atomic bomb; the committee consisted of himself and other scientists at the Met Lab, including
Donald J. Hughes, J. J. Nickson, Eugene Rabinowitch, Glenn T. Seaborg, J. C. Stearns and
Leo Szilard. The committee is most known for the compilation of the
Franck Report, finished on
June 11, 1945, which was a summary of the problems regarding the military application of the Atomic Bomb.
When
Germany invaded
Denmark in
World War II, the Hungarian chemist
George de Hevesy dissolved the gold
Nobel Prizes of
Max von Laue and James Franck in
aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the
Niels Bohr Institute. After the war, he returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The Nobel Society then recast the Nobel Prizes using the original gold.
rss feed