18 Facts About Karl Herzfeld

Karl Ferdinand Herzfeld was an Austrian-American physicist and chemist.

Karl Herzfeld worked on condensed matter physics, fluid dynamics and statistical mechanics.

Karl Herzfeld was born in Vienna during the reign of the Habsburgs over the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

In 1902, when Karl Herzfeld was 10 years old, he was enrolled in the private Gymnasium Schottengymnasium, which was run by the Benedictine Order of the Roman Catholic Church and had its name derived from the fact that the founders came from Scotland.

Karl Herzfeld attended this school until 1910, when he began attending the University of Vienna to study physics and chemistry.

In 1913, he went to study at the University of Gottingen, after which Karl Herzfeld returned to Vienna, and was granted his doctorate in 1914, under Friedrich Hasenohrl, who had become director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, upon the suicide of Ludwig Boltzmann in 1906.

In 1925, Karl Herzfeld published his book on kinetic theory and statistical mechanics, which became a graduate-level textbook in German-speaking universities.

At Johns Hopkins, Karl Herzfeld worked with other European colleagues on the University's physics faculty, namely James Franck and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who were awarded Nobel Prizes in Physics in 1925 and 1963, respectively.

Karl Herzfeld coauthored articles with Franck on photosynthesis, one being after they had both left Johns Hopkins.

In 1936, Karl Herzfeld moved to The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where he remained until his death in 1978.

Karl Herzfeld received emeritus status in 1969 and stayed active for the rest of his life.

Reasons for Karl Herzfeld leaving Johns Hopkins were described in a letter to Arnold Sommerfeld.

Bearden suspected that Karl Herzfeld had brought Franck to Johns Hopkins to further Karl Herzfeld's ambitions to be department chairman.

Karl Herzfeld's teaching responsibilities and salary at Catholic University were about the same as that at Johns Hopkins, but there were additional administrative duties, as he was chairman of the physics department.

In 1966, Karl Herzfeld published a review article summarizing 50 years of developments in physical ultrasonics.

In 1938, Karl Herzfeld married Regina Flannery, who was an instructor of anthropology at Catholic University; by the time she retired in 1970, she had risen to professor and the first woman to head that department.

Karl Herzfeld was a Catholic who had a profound interest in Catholic theology.

Karl Herzfeld received the James Cardinal Gibbons Medal for his contributions to the United States, the Catholic Church, and The Catholic University of America.