10 Facts About Paul Scherrer

Later, Scherrer became head of the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich.

In 1912, Paul Scherrer spent one semester at Konigsberg University, then undertook further studies at the University of Gottingen, graduating from there with a doctorate on the Faraday Effect in the hydrogen molecule.

Paul Scherrer is perhaps best known for determining the inverse relationship between the width of an x-ray diffraction peak and the crystallite size.

Paul Scherrer became Principal of the Physical Institute at ETH in 1927 and focused its direction on nuclear physics, a research branch that was still coming into being at that stage.

Paul Scherrer later became the foremost proponent of Switzerland developing its own nuclear weapons with enriched uranium supplied by Belgian Congo, a program which was actively pursued by the government for 43 years and abandoned only in 1988 by Arnold Koller, then member of the Swiss Federal Council and head of the Swiss military department.

In parallel with his main professional occupation as a researcher and leader of an institution, Paul Scherrer served in various institutions and committees involved in the dissemination of nuclear energy in Switzerland: the Swiss Federal Council appointed him to the post of President of the Swiss Study Commission on Atomic Energy in 1946, and President of the Swiss Commission for Atomic Sciences in 1958.

When Paul Scherrer was made emeritus professor in 1960, after 40 years at ETH Zurich, he took up a teaching appointment at the University of Basel and his former students and friends put together a Festschrift.

In 1922 Paul Scherrer married Ina Sonderegger, with whom he had two daughters.

Paul Scherrer died on 25 September 1969 after a horse-riding accident.

The eponymous Paul Scherrer Institute, based near Villigen in canton of Aargau, was established January 1,1988 by merging the 1960 established EIR and the 1968 established SIN with Professor Jean-Pierre Blaser named its first director.