Fritz Rohrlich

Fritz Rohrlich (born May 12, 1921 in Vienna, Austria) is an American theoretical physicist who studied classical electrodynamics and quantum electrodynamics.

Life and work

Rohrlich was born in Vienna as the son of a Jewish lawyer. He left Austria after the "Anschluss" in 1938 (at that time he even had to do forced labor[1]) to study at the Technion in Haifa in 1939, majoring in electrical engineering and chemical engineering. His parents were sent to Sobibor in 1942. While working in Jerusalem as a technician for the British, he studied physics with Giulio Racah at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which was his ultimate goal. In 1946, he continued his studies at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1947 with a master's degree and 1948 with Julian Schwinger doctorate.

He was then assistant to Norman Foster Ramsey at Harvard, and in 1948, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1949, he conducted research at Cornell University with Hans Bethe. There he also met Richard Feynman, which revived his interest in the divergence problems of classical electrodynamics, for which he later became a leading expert. At the same time, he also made significant contributions to the establishment of early quantum electrodynamics (he demonstrated the equivalence of the various formulations for spin-0 particles, after Freeman Dyson had demonstrated the version of spin-½ particles).

In 1951, he became an assistant professor at Princeton University, where he gave lectures on quantum electrodynamics, out of which the textbook he coauthored with Josef-Maria Jauch was based. Starting in 1953 he was a colleague of Jauch at the University of Iowa, before he became a professor at Syracuse University in 1963. In the early 1960s he also investigated (with T. Fulton and Louis Witten) the problem of the radiation of the free-falling charged particle in the general theory of relativity and the question of whether this violated the principle of equivalence. In 1980s, he put his focus on the philosophy of science. In 1991 he retired and became a professor emeritus.

In 1957 he became a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 1974 he became honorary professor at the University of Graz and received the Fulbright Award.

Selected works

Research articles

Books

  • Classical charged particles. 3rd ed., World Scientific Press, Hackensack, NJ 2007, ISBN 978-981-270-004-9 (Update of the New York 1955 edition).
  • From paradox to reality. Our basic concepts of the physical world. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1997, ISBN 0-521-30749-X .
  • The theory of photons and electrons. The relativistic quantum field theory of charged particles with spin one-half. 2nd ed., Springer, Berlin 1976, ISBN 3-540-07295-0 (Nachdr., Ed. London 1955, together with Josef Maria Jauch).

Reference

  1. ↑ Friedrich Stadler: Vertriebene Vernunft. Emigration und Exil österreichischer Wissenschaft. LIT-Verlag, Münster 2004, ISBN 3-8258-7372-2
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