14 Facts About Carl Wagner

Carl Wilhelm Wagner was a German physical chemist.

Carl Wagner is best known for his pioneering work on solid-state chemistry, where his work on oxidation rate theory, counter diffusion of ions and defect chemistry led to a better understanding of how reactions take place at the atomic level.

Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany; the son of Dr Julius Wagner who was the Head of Chemistry at the local institute and secretary of the German Bunsen Society of Physical Chemistry.

Carl Wagner graduated from the University of Munich and gained his PhD at the University of Leipzig in 1924 supervised by Max Le Blanc with a dissertation on the reaction rate in solutions, "Beitrage zur Kenntnis der Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit in Losungen".

Carl Wagner was interested in the measurement of thermodynamic activities of the components in solid and liquid alloys.

Carl Wagner researched problems of solid-state chemistry, especially the role of defects of ionic crystals on thermodynamic properties, electrical conductivity and diffusion.

Carl Wagner became a research fellow at the Bodernstein Institute at the University of Berlin.

Carl Wagner's subsequent published papers led to the new concept of chemical disorder now known as defect chemistry.

Carl Wagner spent one year as Visiting Professor of Physical Chemistry, at the University of Hamburg in 1933, before moving to the Technische Universitat Darmstadt where he was Professor of Physical Chemistry until 1945.

Carl Wagner proposed an important law of oxidation kinetics in 1933.

Carl Wagner was invited to the United States to become a scientific advisor at Fort Bliss, Texas, with other German scientists as part of Operation Paperclip.

Carl Wagner was a professor of metallurgy at MIT from 1949 until 1958.

Carl Wagner then returned to Germany to take up the position of Director of the Max Planck Institute of Physical Chemistry at Gottingen, which was vacant due to the untimely death of Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer.

Carl Wagner officially retired in 1966 but from 1967 to 1977 was a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen, continuing to contribute to publications.