Charlotte Riefenstahl was a German physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

. She has no relation to Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...

, the notable German filmmaker.

Education

Riefenstahl began her studies at the Georg-August University of Göttingen

Georg-August University of Göttingen

The University of Göttingen , known informally as Georgia Augusta, is a university in the city of Göttingen, Germany.Founded in 1734 by King George II of Great Britain and the Elector of Hanover, it opened for classes in 1737. The University of Göttingen soon grew in size and popularity...

 in 1922, where her teachers included, among others, Max Born

Max Born

Max Born was a German-born physicist and mathematician who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics and supervised the work of a number of notable physicists in the 1920s and 30s...

, Richard Courant

Richard Courant

Richard Courant was a German American mathematician.- Life :Courant was born in Lublinitz in the German Empire's Prussian Province of Silesia. During his youth, his parents had to move quite often, to Glatz, Breslau, and in 1905 to Berlin. He stayed in Breslau and entered the university there...

, James Franck

James Franck

James Franck was a German Jewish physicist and Nobel laureate.-Biography:Franck was born to Jacob Franck and Rebecca Nachum Drucker. Franck completed his Ph.D...

, David Hilbert

David Hilbert

David Hilbert was a German mathematician. He is recognized as one of the most influential and universal mathematicians of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hilbert discovered and developed a broad range of fundamental ideas in many areas, including invariant theory and the axiomatization of...

, Emmy Noether

Emmy Noether

Amalie Emmy Noether was an influential German mathematician known for her groundbreaking contributions to abstract algebra and theoretical physics. Described by David Hilbert, Albert Einstein and others as the most important woman in the history of mathematics, she revolutionized the theories of...

, Robert Pohl

Robert Pohl

Robert Wichard Pohl was a German physicist.In 1938 Robert Pohl and Rudolf Hilsch, from the University of Göttingen, built the first functioning solid-state amplifier using salt as the semiconductor ....

, and Carl Runge. She received her doctorate under Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann

Gustav Heinrich Johann Apollon Tammann

Gustav Tammann - was a prominent chemist-physicist of Baltic-German descent who made important contributions in the fields of glassy and solid solutions, heterogeneous equilibria, crystallization, and metallurgy.- Biography :...

  in 1927, the same year as Robert Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer

Julius Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley. Along with Enrico Fermi, he is often called the "father of the atomic bomb" for his role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II project that developed the first...

, under Born, and Fritz Houtermans

Fritz Houtermans

Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist born in Zoppot near Danzig, West Prussia...

, under Franck. She was courted by both Oppenheimer and Houtermans.

Career

Riefenstahl taught and was a research assistant at Vassar College

Vassar College

Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

.

In 1930, Riefenstahl left Vassar and went back to Germany. During a physics conference at the Black Sea

Black Sea

The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...

 resort of Batumi

Batumi

Batumi is a seaside city on the Black Sea coast and capital of Adjara, an autonomous republic in southwest Georgia. Sometimes considered Georgia's second capital, with a population of 121,806 , Batumi serves as an important port and a commercial center. It is situated in a subtropical zone, rich in...

, Riefenstahl and Houtermans were married in August 1930, with Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli was an Austrian theoretical physicist and one of the pioneers of quantum physics. In 1945, after being nominated by Albert Einstein, he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle or...

 and Rudolf Peierls

Rudolf Peierls

Sir Rudolf Ernst Peierls, CBE was a German-born British physicist. Rudolf Peierls had a major role in Britain's nuclear program, but he also had a role in many modern sciences...

 as witnesses to the ceremony. (Three other references cite the year as being 1931.)
After Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 came to power in 1933, Charlotte Houtermans insisted that they leave Germany. They went to Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

, near Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

. Max von Laue

Max von Laue

Max Theodor Felix von Laue was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals...

 was the last to send them off, as he entrusted Charlotte with messages for friends abroad. In 1935, Charlotte and Fritz left England for the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

, as Fritz accepted a job in Khar’kov

Kharkiv

Kharkiv or Kharkov is the second-largest city in Ukraine.The city was founded in 1654 and was a major centre of Ukrainian culture in the Russian Empire. Kharkiv became the first city in Ukraine where the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed in December 1917 and Soviet government was...

. In 1937, he was arrested by the NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

 and imprisoned. Charlotte managed to escape to Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 and eventually went back to England and then on to the USA.

Charlotte was the first and third wife to Fritz Houtermans in four marriages. They were divorced in 1943, due to a new law in Germany and enforced wartime separation. They were again married in August 1953, with Pauli again standing as a witness; the marriage ended after only a few months. They had two children during their first marriage, Giovanna and Jan.

Literature

• Monica Healea and Charlotte Houtermans The Relative Secondary Electron Emission Due to He, Ne, and A Ions Bombarding a Hot Nickel Target, Phys. Rev. Volume 58, Number 7, 608 - 610 (1940). The authors are identified as being at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York. Houtermans is identified as a Research Assistant in Physics. The article was received 17 June 1940.

• Monica Healea and Charlotte Houtermans The Effect of Temperature on the Secondary Electron Emission from Nickel, Phys. Rev. Volume 60, Number 2, 154 - 154 (1941). The authors are identified as being at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York . The article was received 20 June 1941.

Books

• Wentzel, Gregor, translated by Charlotte Houtermans and J. M. Jauch, with an Appendix by J. M. Jauch Quantum Theory of Fields (Interscience, 1949) (Dover, 2003)

External links

• Biography: Fritz Houtermans – Wolfram
• Konrad Landrock - Friedrich Georg Houtermans (1903–1966) – Ein bedeutender Physiker des 20. Jahrhunderts
• Charlotte Riefenstahl – Nernst Memorial Website
• Gustav Tammann – Nernst Memorial Website. A picture of Charlotte Riefenstahl appears on this page; clicking on the picture calls up a larger version.
• Fritz Houtermans - Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften