biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1882–1964)
|
| biography:
| Physicist, born in Hamburg, N Germany. Professor of physics at Göttingen (1920), he worked with Gustav Hertz on quantized energy absorption in molecules, for which they were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1925. He emigrated to the USA in 1935, became professor of physical chemistry at Chicago (1938–49), and worked on the development of the atomic bomb in World War 2. He headed the Franck Committee of scientists who urged that the bomb should not be used, but could be detonated in an unpopulated area to demonstrate its power. |
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