Friedrich Hasenöhrl (1874-1915)
Friedrich Hasenöhrl was born in Vienna, Austria 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 Vienna under Stephan and Boltzmann. He worked under H. A. Lorentz in Leiden at the low temperature laboratory.
In 1904 and 1905 he published two papers on the inertia of a cavity containing radiation. He derived a formula connecting mass, energy and the speed of light that written in modern terms is E=(4/3)mc2, which only differs in the constant of 4/3 from the famous one credited to Albert Einstein. This was an entirely classical derivation (no use of special relativity) and used Maxwell's equation for the pressure of light. It is worth noting that Einstein's 1905 derivation of E=mc2 was also given as an approximation, good in the limit as v2c2 approached zero.
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 Schrodinger, 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 the South Tyrol. He was wounded, recovered and returned to the front. He was then killed in action on October 7, 1915 at the age of 41.
References
- Hasenöhrl,Friedrich, Berichte der Wiener Akadamie, 113, 1039 (1904).
- Hasenöhrl,Friedrich, Annalen der Physik, 16, 589 (1905).
- Lenard, Philipp, Great Men of Science. Translated from the second German edition, G. Bell and sons, London (1950) ISBN 083691614X
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