physics

Wilhelm Walcher

Wilhelm Walcher is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wilhelm Walcher rather than just read about it. In short: Wilhelm Walcher (7 July 1910 in Kaufbeuren – 9 November 2005 in Marburg) was a German experimental physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; he worked on mass spectrometers for isotope separation.

Key takeaways

Wilhelm Walcher belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wilhelm Walcher to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wilhelm Walcher from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Wilhelm Walcher (7 July 1910 in Kaufbeuren – 9 November 2005 in Marburg) was a German experimental physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club; he worked on mass spectrometers for isotope separation. After the war, he was director of the Institute of Physics at the University of Marburg. He was a president of the German Physical Society and a vice president of the German Research Foundation. He helped found the Society for Heavy Ion Research and the German Electron Synchrotron DESY. He was also one of the 18 signatories of the Göttingen Manifest.

Education From 1929 to 1935, Walcher studied at the Technische Hochschule München (today, the Technical University of Munich) and the Technische Hochschule Berlin (today, the Technische Universität Berlin. At Berlin, he was a teaching assistant to Gustav Hertz, Hans Kopfermann, Wilhelm Heinrich Westphal, and Hans Geiger. In 1933, on the advice of Hertz, he became a member of the Nationalsozialistischer Kraftfahrer Korps (NSKK, National Socialist Motorist Corps). He received his doctorate in 1937, at the Technische Hochschule Berlin, under Kopfermann.

Career In 1937, Walcher became a teaching assistant to Hans Kopfermann, who had taken an appointment at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel; Walcher was his teaching assistant there until 1942. At Kiel, Walcher developed a mass spectrograph for both isotope separation and determination of the degree of enrichment of uranium samples. From 1940, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranverein (Uranium Club), under which he worked on two mass spectrometers to determine the composition of isotope mixtures and for neutron-spin analysis In 1942, Walcher’s Habilitationsschrift was rejected on the basis of “political unreliability.” However, Hans Kopfermann, a principal in the Uranverein, had become the Director of the Second Experimental Physics Institute at the Georg-August University of Göttingen in 1942 and he successfully intervened on Walcher’s behalf so that the Habilitation from the University of Kiel was conferred. From 1942 to 1947, Walcher was a Privatdozent at the University of Göttingen. From 1947 to 1978, Walcher was an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) of experimental physics and director of the Physikalischen Institut (Physics Institute) at Philipps-Universität Marburg. He was Rektor (Rector) of the University from 1952 to 1954. From 1960 to 1961, Walcher was president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. He was the vice president of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DGF, German Research Foundation) from 1961 to 1967. Walcher was a co-initiator of the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI, Society for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt and the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY, German Electron Synchrotron) in Hamburg. In 1957, Walcher was one of the 18 signers of the Göttinger Manifest, which opposed the rearming of Germany with nuclear weapons.

Honors Walcher received honors for his contributions to Germany and the German physics community:

1975 – Großes Verdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit) of the Verdienstorden der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany) 1976 – Ehrendoktorwürde der Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Honorary doctorate of the Ruhr-University Bochum)

Internal Reports The following report was published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte (Research Reports in Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.

Wilhelm Walcher Bericht über den Stand der in Kiel durchgeführten massenspektroskopischen Arbeiten G-196 (March 1942)

Books by Walcher Wilhelm Walcher Praktikum der Physik (Vieweg & Teubner, 1967, 1989, 2006) Detlef Kamke and Wilhelm Walcher Physik für Mediziner (Vieweg & Teubner, 1982, 1994, 2004) Max Wutz, Hermann Adam, and Wilhelm Walcher Handbuch Vakuumtechnik. Theorie und Praxis (Vieweg Friedr. & Sohn Verlag, 1986, 1989, 1992, 1997, 2004)

Bibliography Hentschel, Klaus (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996) Walker, Mark German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949 (Cambridge, 1993) ISBN 0-521-43804-7

Notes

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wilhelm Walcher

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wilhelm Walcher claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wilhelm Walcher before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wilhelm Walcher ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wilhelm Walcher

In research: Wilhelm Walcher appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wilhelm Walcher in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wilhelm Walcher is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1910 births, 2005 deaths, 20th-century German physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wilhelm Walcher outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wilhelm Walcher in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wilhelm Walcher means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wilhelm Walcher out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wilhelm Walcher in simple terms?

Why does Wilhelm Walcher matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wilhelm Walcher?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wilhelm Walcher.