Johannes Stark was a German scientist who found the Stark Effect. Because of this, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919. During the Nazi regime, he was also very involved with the “Deutsche Physik” movement, which was a nationalist movement in the German physics world. He went to Bayreuth’s local grammar school and then to Regensburg before getting his degree from the University of Munich. He went to college and studied physics, chemistry, math, and crystallography. After he graduated, he took on different jobs at the University of Munich’s Physics Institute. After that, he worked for many German universities, such as the University of Gottingen, the RWTH Aachen University, and the University of Greifswald. He was also the editor of one of Germany’s scientific magazines, and it was while he was an editor that he published a paper by an unknown Albert Einstein on the Theory of Relativity. But when the Nazis were in power in Germany, he joined the ultra-nationalist “German Physics” movement, which wanted German scientists to be the best in the world. He had also said bad things about Einstein, calling him a “Jewish Science” promoter.
Early years and childhood
On April 15, 1874, Johannes Stark was born in Schickenhof, Kingdom of Bavaria. His father owned some land.
He went to Bayreuth Gymnasium (secondary school) when he was young. After his time at Bayreuth, he went to Regensburg to study.
He went to school at the University of Munich from 1894 to 1897, when he got his degree. He went to college and studied physics, math, and chemistry. For his doctoral thesis, he wrote about Newton’s electrochromic rings in a certain kind of dim medium.
After he graduated from the University of Munich, he worked in different roles at the Physics Institute at the University of Munich. In 1900, he taught physics at the University of Gottingen without getting paid.
Johannes Stark’s Career
In 1906, the Technische Hochschule in Hannover made Johannes Stark a “extraordinary professor.” After three years there, he was hired as a professor at the RWTH Aachen University. He was a teacher at the secondary school for eight years.
In 1907, Stark asked Albert Einstein, who was not very well known at the time, to write an article about his theory of relativity for the scientific journal Jahrbuch der Radioaktivität und Elektronik. He was in charge of the journal, and he liked the theory as a whole.
In 1913, he found the “Stark Effect,” which was the most important thing he did as a physicist. It means that when an electric field is present, the spectral lines of atoms and molecules move and split apart.
In 1917, he was hired as a professor at the University of Greifswald. Two years later, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work, which became known as the “Stark Effect.”
In 1920, he worked at the University of Wurzberg as a professor in the university’s physics institute. He stayed at the university for two years. After he won the Nobel Prize, he used the money to set up his own private lab and keep working on his experiments.
In 1933, the members of the Physico-Technical Institute chose him to be the group’s president. He performed his role as the president of the institute for six-year and he retired thereafter. During the same time, he also led the German Research Association as its President.
After the Nazi Party started in Germany, Stark became a supporter of German nationalism with Nazi ideas and fought a personal war against Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg. He said they were spreading “Jewish Science,” and he started his own scientific movement called “German physics.”
He also told other scientists that they should do what he said. After the end of the Second World War, he was called a “Major Offender” and sent to prison for four years. But the sentence was put on hold.
Works of note
His scientific work focuses on electric currents in gases, spectroscopic analysis, and the valency of chemicals. He wrote more than 300 papers about different scientific findings, but the “Stark Effect” was his most important work. He won the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Awards & Achievements
In 1915, he got the Matteucci Medal from the Rome Academy. In 1919, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics “for his discoveries of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields.” Stark splitting or Stark shift is the amount of splitting or shifting.
Personal History and Legacies
Johannes Stark Luise Uepler and her husband had five kids together.
He died in Traunstein, Germany, on June 21, 1957, at the age of 83.
Estimated Net worth
Unknown.