James Franck, 1882-1964

Abstract

James Franck was born in Hamburg on 26 August 1882, the son of Jacob and Rebecca Franck. In his school, a sound training in classics was regarded as the principal aim of education, and it was largely due to Franck’s lack of interest in languages that he was considered to be a boy of little promise. At an early age he earned for himself the reputation of a dreamer on account of his tendency to become entirely absorbed in the observation of things around him, and in attempts to understand them. One day, during the Greek lesson, he discovered a grease spot in his note book, and noticed that he could see the writing on the other side of the page through the spot. This set him thinking until he had solved the scattering problem to his satisfaction, but left him a little behind the class in the matter of Greek verbs. A sharp thrust from the master, which caught him once again unprepared, demonstrated that classical studies were not to be his métier. According to his own report, he only just managed to pass the ‘Abiturium’ which enabled him to enrol at a university. His father, a Hamburg banker, sent him to Heidelberg to study law and economics, the normal preparation for a life of ‘affairs’ in those days; the parents hoped that he would later join the family firm. James Franck had never any doubt that it was physics he wanted to study, but he dutifully attended lectures on law and economics. At the same time, however, he mixed with scientists and went to courses in geology and chemistry; the lectures on physics in Heidelberg—Lenard was not there at that time—were rather uninspiring. They reflected the widely held view that nothing fundamental in the subject remained to be discovered, since everything would ultimately be reduced to Newton’s mechanics.