Friedrich Hasenöhrl
Encyclopedia
Friedrich Hasenöhrl was an Austro-Hungarian
physicist
.
under Joseph Stefan
( 1835–1893 ) and Ludwig Boltzmann
( 1844–1906 ). He worked under Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
in Leiden at the low temperature laboratory, and there he also was friendly connected with H. A. Lorentz
.
In 1907 he became Boltzmann's successor at the University of Vienna as the head of the Department of Theoretical Physics. He had a number of illustrious pupils there and had an especially significant impact on Erwin Schrödinger
, who later won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his contributions to Quantum Mechanics
.
When the war broke out in 1914, he volunteered at once into the Austria-Hungarian army. He fought as Oberleutnant against the Italians in Tyrol
. He was wounded, recovered and returned to the front. He was then killed by a grenade in an attack on Mount Plaut on October 7, 1915 at the age of 40.
in 1881, many physicists like Wilhelm Wien
(1900), Max Abraham
(1902), and Hendrik Lorentz
(1904) used equations equivalent to
for the so called "electromagnetic mass
", which expresses how much electromagnetic energy contributes to the mass of bodies. And Henri Poincaré
(1900) implicitly used the expression m=E/c2 for the mass of electromagnetic energy.
Following this line of thought, Hasenöhrl (1904, 1905) published several papers on the inertia of a cavity containing radiation. This was an entirely classical derivation (no use of special relativity) and used Maxwell's
equation for the pressure of light
. Hasenöhrl specifically associated the "apparent" mass via inertia with the energy concept through the equation
,
where hε0 is the radiation energy. He also concluded that this result is valid for all radiating bodies, i.e. for all bodies whose temperature is > 0°K. For this result Hasenöhrl was awarded the Haitinger prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
. However, it was shown by Abraham that Hasenöhrl's calculation for the apparent mass was incorrect, so he published another paper in 1905, where he presented Abraham's criticism and corrected his formula to:
This was the same relation (as Hasenöhrl noted himself) as for the electromagnetic mass
formula given above. He wrote in 1904:
Hasenöhrl's results (concerning apparent mass and thermodynamics) by using cavity radiation was further elaborated and criticized by Kurd von Mosengeil
(1906/7) who already incorporated Albert Einstein
's theory of relativity
in his work. A broad outline of relativistic thermodynamics and mass-energy equivalence
using cavity radiation was given by Max Planck
in 1907.
In some additional papers (1907, 1908) Hasenöhrl elaborated further on his 1904-work and concluded that his new results were now in accordance to the theories of Mosengeil and Planck. However, he complained about the fact that Planck (1907) did not mention his earlier 1904-results (like the dependency of apparent mass on temperature). Eventually, in 1908 Planck wrote that the results of Hasenöhrl's new approach from 1907 were indeed equivalent to those of relativity.
Afterwards, both Planck and Wolfgang Pauli
gave credit to Hasenöhrl for his 1904 achievements on cavity radiation.
. Some argue that this problem is analogous to the so-called 4/3 problem of electromagnetic mass. That is, if Hasenöhrl had included the shell in his calculations in a way consistent with relativity, the pre-factor of 4/3 would have been 1, so yielding 
. He could not have done this, since he did not have relativistic mechanics, with which he could model the shell.
On the other hand, Stephen Boughn and Tony Rothman
(2011), who gave a historical account of different solutions to the problem, argued that the above explanation is incorrect. After providing a complete relativistic description and solution of the cavity problem (in the "constant velocity case" and "slow acceleration case"), they wrote:
(like those of Hasenöhrl's) were similar to the famous equation for mass–energy equivalence:
published by Albert Einstein
in September 1905 in the Annalen der Physik —a few editions after Hasenöhrl published his results on cavity radiation. The similarity between those formulas led some critics of Einstein, up until the 1930s, to claim that he plagiarized the formula from Hasenöhrl, often in connection with the antisemitic Deutsche Physik
.
As an example, Phillip Lenard published a paper in 1921 in which he gave priority for "E=mc²" to Hasenöhrl (Lenard also gave credit to Johann Georg von Soldner
and Paul Gerber
in relation to some effects of general relativity
).
However, Max von Laue
quickly rebutted those claims by saying that the inertia of electromagnetic energy was long known before Hasenöhrl, especially by the works of Henri Poincaré
(1900) and Max Abraham
(1902), while Hasenöhrl only used their results for his calculation on cavity radiation. Laue continued by saying that credit for establishing the inertia of all forms of energy (the real mass-energy equivalence) goes to Einstein, who was also the first to understand the deep implications of that equivalence in relation to relativity.
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
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...
.
Life
Friedrich Hasenöhrl was born in Vienna, Austria (Austria-Hungary) in 1874. His father was a lawyer and his mother belonged to a prominent aristocratic family. After his elementary education, he studied natural science and mathematics at the University of ViennaUniversity of Vienna
The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...
under Joseph Stefan
Joseph Stefan
Joseph Stefan was a physicist, mathematician, and poet of Slovene mother tongue and Austrian citizenship.- Life and work :...
( 1835–1893 ) and Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Boltzmann
Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist famous for his founding contributions in the fields of statistical mechanics and statistical thermodynamics...
( 1844–1906 ). He worked under Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He pioneered refrigeration techniques, and he explored how materials behaved when cooled to nearly absolute zero. He was the first to liquify helium...
in Leiden at the low temperature laboratory, and there he also was friendly connected with H. A. Lorentz
Hendrik Lorentz
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect...
.
In 1907 he became Boltzmann's successor at the University of Vienna as the head of the Department of Theoretical Physics. He had a number of illustrious pupils there and had an especially significant impact on Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Schrödinger
Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger was an Austrian physicist and theoretical biologist who was one of the fathers of quantum mechanics, and is famed for a number of important contributions to physics, especially the Schrödinger equation, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1933...
, who later won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his contributions to Quantum Mechanics
Quantum mechanics
Quantum mechanics, also known as quantum physics or quantum theory, is a branch of physics providing a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter. It departs from classical mechanics primarily at the atomic and subatomic...
.
When the war broke out in 1914, he volunteered at once into the Austria-Hungarian army. He fought as Oberleutnant against the Italians in Tyrol
County of Tyrol
The County of Tyrol, Princely County from 1504, was a State of the Holy Roman Empire, from 1814 a province of the Austrian Empire and from 1867 a Cisleithanian crown land of Austria-Hungary...
. He was wounded, recovered and returned to the front. He was then killed by a grenade in an attack on Mount Plaut on October 7, 1915 at the age of 40.
Cavity Radiation
Since J. J. ThomsonJ. J. Thomson
Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS was a British physicist and Nobel laureate. He is credited for the discovery of the electron and of isotopes, and the invention of the mass spectrometer...
in 1881, many physicists like Wilhelm Wien
Wilhelm Wien
Wilhelm Carl Werner Otto Fritz Franz Wien was a German physicist who, in 1893, used theories about heat and electromagnetism to deduce Wien's displacement law, which calculates the emission of a blackbody at any temperature from the emission at any one reference temperature.He also formulated an...
(1900), Max Abraham
Max Abraham
Max Abraham was a German physicist.Abraham was born in Danzig, Imperial Germany to a family of Jewish merchants. His father was Moritz Abraham and his mother was Selma Moritzsohn. Attending the University of Berlin, he studied under Max Planck. He graduated in 1897...
(1902), and Hendrik Lorentz
Hendrik Lorentz
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz was a Dutch physicist who shared the 1902 Nobel Prize in Physics with Pieter Zeeman for the discovery and theoretical explanation of the Zeeman effect...
(1904) used equations equivalent to
for the so called "electromagnetic mass
Electromagnetic mass
Electromagnetic mass was initially a concept of classical mechanics, denoting as to how much the electromagnetic field, or the self-energy, is contributing to the mass of charged particles. It was first derived by J. J. Thomson in 1881 and was for some time also considered as a dynamical...
", which expresses how much electromagnetic energy contributes to the mass of bodies. And Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and a philosopher of science...
(1900) implicitly used the expression m=E/c2 for the mass of electromagnetic energy.
Following this line of thought, Hasenöhrl (1904, 1905) published several papers on the inertia of a cavity containing radiation. This was an entirely classical derivation (no use of special relativity) and used Maxwell's
James Clerk Maxwell
James Clerk Maxwell of Glenlair was a Scottish physicist and mathematician. His most prominent achievement was formulating classical electromagnetic theory. This united all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and optics into a consistent theory...
equation for the pressure of light
Radiation pressure
Radiation pressure is the pressure exerted upon any surface exposed to electromagnetic radiation. If absorbed, the pressure is the power flux density divided by the speed of light...
. Hasenöhrl specifically associated the "apparent" mass via inertia with the energy concept through the equation
,where hε0 is the radiation energy. He also concluded that this result is valid for all radiating bodies, i.e. for all bodies whose temperature is > 0°K. For this result Hasenöhrl was awarded the Haitinger prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
Austrian Academy of Sciences
The Austrian Academy of Sciences is a legal entity under the special protection of the Federal Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every field, particularly in fundamental research...
. However, it was shown by Abraham that Hasenöhrl's calculation for the apparent mass was incorrect, so he published another paper in 1905, where he presented Abraham's criticism and corrected his formula to:
This was the same relation (as Hasenöhrl noted himself) as for the electromagnetic mass
Electromagnetic mass
Electromagnetic mass was initially a concept of classical mechanics, denoting as to how much the electromagnetic field, or the self-energy, is contributing to the mass of charged particles. It was first derived by J. J. Thomson in 1881 and was for some time also considered as a dynamical...
formula given above. He wrote in 1904:
Hasenöhrl's results (concerning apparent mass and thermodynamics) by using cavity radiation was further elaborated and criticized by Kurd von Mosengeil
Kurd von Mosengeil
Kurd Friedrich Rudolf von Mosengeil, also Curd Friedrich Rudolf von Mosengeil , was a German physicist....
(1906/7) who already incorporated Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
's theory of relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
in his work. A broad outline of relativistic thermodynamics and mass-energy equivalence
Mass-energy equivalence
In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the concept that the mass of a body is a measure of its energy content. In this concept, mass is a property of all energy, and energy is a property of all mass, and the two properties are connected by a constant...
using cavity radiation was given by Max Planck
Max Planck
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS, was a German physicist who actualized the quantum physics, initiating a revolution in natural science and philosophy. He is regarded as the founder of the quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.-Life and career:Planck came...
in 1907.
In some additional papers (1907, 1908) Hasenöhrl elaborated further on his 1904-work and concluded that his new results were now in accordance to the theories of Mosengeil and Planck. However, he complained about the fact that Planck (1907) did not mention his earlier 1904-results (like the dependency of apparent mass on temperature). Eventually, in 1908 Planck wrote that the results of Hasenöhrl's new approach from 1907 were indeed equivalent to those of relativity.
Afterwards, both Planck and 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...
gave credit to Hasenöhrl for his 1904 achievements on cavity radiation.
Explanations
There are different explanations for this result and its deviation from the relativistic formula. Some argue that this problem is analogous to the so-called 4/3 problem of electromagnetic mass. That is, if Hasenöhrl had included the shell in his calculations in a way consistent with relativity, the pre-factor of 4/3 would have been 1, so yielding . He could not have done this, since he did not have relativistic mechanics, with which he could model the shell.On the other hand, Stephen Boughn and Tony Rothman
Tony Rothman
Tony Rothman is an American theoretical physicist, academic and writer.-Early life:Tony is the son of science fiction writer Milton A. Rothman....
(2011), who gave a historical account of different solutions to the problem, argued that the above explanation is incorrect. After providing a complete relativistic description and solution of the cavity problem (in the "constant velocity case" and "slow acceleration case"), they wrote:
Hasenöhrl and Einstein
The formulas for electromagnetic massElectromagnetic mass
Electromagnetic mass was initially a concept of classical mechanics, denoting as to how much the electromagnetic field, or the self-energy, is contributing to the mass of charged particles. It was first derived by J. J. Thomson in 1881 and was for some time also considered as a dynamical...
(like those of Hasenöhrl's) were similar to the famous equation for mass–energy equivalence:
published by Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
in September 1905 in the Annalen der Physik —a few editions after Hasenöhrl published his results on cavity radiation. The similarity between those formulas led some critics of Einstein, up until the 1930s, to claim that he plagiarized the formula from Hasenöhrl, often in connection with the antisemitic Deutsche Physik
Deutsche Physik
Deutsche Physik or Aryan Physics was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s against the work of Albert Einstein, labeled "Jewish Physics"...
.
As an example, Phillip Lenard published a paper in 1921 in which he gave priority for "E=mc²" to Hasenöhrl (Lenard also gave credit to Johann Georg von Soldner
Johann Georg von Soldner
Johann Georg von Soldner was a German physicist, mathematician and astronomer, first in Berlin and later in 1808 in Munich.-Life:...
and Paul Gerber
Paul Gerber
Paul Gerber was a German physicist. He studied in Berlin from 1872-1875. In 1877 he became a teacher at the Realgymnasium in Stargard in Pommern...
in relation to some effects of general relativity
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...
).
However, 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...
quickly rebutted those claims by saying that the inertia of electromagnetic energy was long known before Hasenöhrl, especially by the works of Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
Jules Henri Poincaré was a French mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer, and a philosopher of science...
(1900) and Max Abraham
Max Abraham
Max Abraham was a German physicist.Abraham was born in Danzig, Imperial Germany to a family of Jewish merchants. His father was Moritz Abraham and his mother was Selma Moritzsohn. Attending the University of Berlin, he studied under Max Planck. He graduated in 1897...
(1902), while Hasenöhrl only used their results for his calculation on cavity radiation. Laue continued by saying that credit for establishing the inertia of all forms of energy (the real mass-energy equivalence) goes to Einstein, who was also the first to understand the deep implications of that equivalence in relation to relativity.
Publications
Hasenöhrl's papers on cavity radiation and thermodynamics:- Zur Theorie der Strahlung bewegter Körper. (Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien. 113 IIa, 1039, 1904).
- English Wikisource translation: On the Theory of Radiation of Moving Bodies.
- Zur Theorie der Strahlung in bewegten Körpern. (Annalen der Physik 15, 344-370, 1904).
- English Wikisource translation: On the Theory of Radiation in Moving Bodies.
- Zur Theorie der Strahlung in bewegten Körpern. Berichtigung (Annalen der Physik 16, 589-592, 1905).
- English Wikisource translation: On the Theory of Radiation in Moving Bodies. Correction.
- Zur Thermodynamik bewegter Systeme (Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien. 116 IIa (9): 1391-1405, 1907)
- Zur Thermodynamik bewegter Systeme (Fortsetzung) (Sitzungsberichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Klasse der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien. 117 IIa (2): 207-215, 1908).
Known Family
- Married
and had at least one known son, Victor Hasenohrl (? - 1982) who married Elizabeth Sayre (? - 1968) and had three children: Frederick ([deceased]married Victoria ?, had a son and daughter, and her residence is unknown), Elizabeth (married Joseph D. Reich, had two sons, and currently resides in Rockville, Maryland), and Margaret (never married and resides in Silver Spring, Maryland).
Further reading
- Lenard, Philipp, Great Men of Science. Translated from the second German edition, G. Bell and sons, London (1950) ISBN 083691614X
- Moore, Walter "Schrödinger: Life and Thought" University of Cambridge (1989) ISBN 0521437679.