Published by the Association Pro ISSI No. 27, September 2011 Editorial
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INTERNATIONAL SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE SPATIUM Published by the Association Pro ISSI No. 27, September 2011 Editorial This issue of Spatium is devoted During all the years since, while Pro to Professor Johannes Geiss, co- ISSI, and later ISSI came into be- Impressum founder of PRO ISSI and spiritus ing, I came to appreciate Johannes rector of ISSI, on the occasion of greatly, while he in turn did not his 85th anniversary on 4 Septem- let up trying to convert me from an ber 2011. engineer to a scientist, and, within the limits of what is possible, he SPATIUM All past twenty-six issues have been succeeded. He got me fascinated Published by the dedicated to the outcome of research about space and its implications on Association Pro ISSI activities in the field of space sci- our lives, and he motivated me to ence. Those endeavours are being produce the Spatium series to con- undertaken by men and women on vey some of this captivation to you, their way to a deeper understand- dear reader. ing of Nature. Only incidentally Association Pro ISSI have we mentioned the persons be- In this sense, the present issue of Hallerstrasse 6, CH-3012 Bern hind the activities, and never did Spatium is not merely the Pro ISSI Phone +41 (0)31 631 48 96 we ask about their motivation, nor association’s festschrift for Johannes’ see what it needs to reach scientific birthday, but also the personal www.issibern.ch/pro-issi.html excellence. homage of one of his students. It is for the whole Spatium series the result of numerous personal Today, we make an exception: we encounters, e-mails, and telephone President are going to paint the picture of calls regularly beginning with a Prof. Nicolas Thomas, an outstanding scientist, to try to telling to make it short and lasting at University of Bern learn about what motivated him least one hour, which altogether and his secrets of success. From provided me with the colours for Layout and Publisher whom could we learn this better painting the picture of a great Dr. Hansjörg Schlaepfer than from Johannes Geiss who, scientist, and a grand human alike. CH-6614 Brissago during a long life time, has been Thank you, Johannes, and thank active in so many scientific fields in you also, Carmen! My thanks go Printing numerous places in the world. also to ISSI’s directors, Silvia Wenger Stämpfli Publikationen AG and generally the staff for support- CH-3001 Bern I met Johannes Geiss for the first ing me all the time. time at the University of Bern in 1994. It was with impressive elo- Hansjörg Schlaepfer quence that he presented his ideas Cinuos-chel for founding a space science insti- August 2011 tute in Switzerland. This was at the age of 68, when his coevals were used to look for repose and rest. In contrast, he was about to crown his Front Cover career by creating ISSI. An artist’s interpretation of the paper: George Gloeckler, Lennard A. Fisk: Johannes Geiss’ Investiga- tions of Solar, Heliospheric and Interstellar Matter, Space Sci Rev (2007) 130: 489–513 on the occa- sion of his 80th birthday. SPATIUM 27 2 Science First The Pro ISSI association’s homage to Johannes Geiss on his 85th birthday, 4 September 2011, by Hansjörg Schlaepfer Rotterdam, 1955 to grant university entrance because ics developed in the 1920s by Max he was drafted into the army. Due Born, James Franck, Werner Heisen- The Sun stands high in the sky of to extended training, he did not berg and other physicists at the Uni- Rotterdam that afternoon early get into combat. He was fortunate versity of Göttingen, attracted his September 1955. Nearly impercep- to end the war as a British prisoner special interest, and studying phys- tibly, the MS Maasdam begins her of war in Schleswig Holstein. After ics at that university became his su- long voyage to New York. Passen- a few weeks, he was released, and preme desire. gers lean against the reeling, saying soon found his family, who had fled goodbye to the silhouettes of the from Outer Pomerania, in a small harbour that slowly fade away in the town near Kassel. His father was Würzburg, 1946: Entering haze. Amongst those passengers is a lucky to find a job managing the the World of Science newly married couple from Bern: large farm of a wealthy banker, Carmen and Johannes Geiss. He has which in turn allowed the Geiss’s to When the universities prepared to just finished a temporary job at the earn their living. reopen, Johannes went to Göttin- university there, and decided to go gen in the British occupation zone to Chicago, where he has obtained Food was scarce in post-war Ger- to enquire about his prospects to employment as a research associate many. In order to obtain decent ra- study at the Georg-August-Univer- with Nobel Prize laureate Harold tioning cards, his sister worked as a sity. His chances, however, stood Urey at the Institute for Nuclear gardener while Johannes worked at dim at best: his Not-Abitur was not Studies: no doubt, it will be an out- felling trees, and other odd jobs. acknowledged, additional courses standingly stimulating environment Yet, not only food was scarce in were required to complement it. for both. those days: Johannes was hungry in- Even worse: the University of Göt- tellectually, and eagerly read all the tingen was in high demand prompt- books he was able to get hold of, ing it to impose a strict numerus Outer Pomerania: especially those on modern physics. clausus. Such, however, were not the The Youth A textbook on quantum mechan- kind of obstacles that could discour- Johannes Geiss was born in 1926. He grew up on his father’s estate, Kornburg, situated some 60 km south of the Baltic Sea, Fig. 1. After two years of education by a private tutor, he went to the public school in the nearby Schwessin. At the age of 10, he entered a grammar school at Stolp, now Slupsk. He learned English, Latin and some French, al- though his favourite subjects turned out to be mathematics, history and sports. The peaceful youth in Kornburg ended abruptly: on 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II broke out. In 1944, Johannes received a Not-Abitur, an emergency qualification intended Fig. 1: Kornburg 1999 (credit: Hans-Ulrich Kuchenbäcker) SPATIUM 27 3 age Johannes; he quickly enrolled the world-famous Georg-August- for the supplementary courses in University of Göttingen. Hannoversch Münden, a beautiful small town near Göttingen that the war seemed to have bypassed. Göttingen 1946: Spring 1946 saw him with the ex- The Study Years ams passed, which should then have opened the doors to Göttingen. Yet, The University of Göttingen was Fig. 2: Johannes Geiss’s intellectual the numerus clausus was still in force founded in 1737, and the liberal fathers: from left to right: Max von Laue2, Wolfgang Paul3, and there; and Johannes had to make a academic spirit associated with Harold C. Urey4 further intermediate step towards Wilhelm von Humboldt’s name has reaching his ultimate dream: he reg- survived there up to today. Famous To conclude his studies, Johannes istered at the University of mathematicians and physicists such had to look for a diploma thesis Würzburg. as Carl Friedrich Gauss, Bernhard opportunity, which in view of the Riemann, David Hilbert or Max numerous fellow students turned Würzburg, an old town on the Born taught there. During the na- out to be far from easy. One day, un- River Main, had suffered heavily tional-socialist regime, this univer- expectedly, Professor Becker called from bombardment during the war. sity lost some of its best teachers, him to the Physics Institute offer- The small, ancient physics institute who, after the war, were followed ing an opportunity for a diploma though, where Wilhelm Roentgen by new excellent scholars from thesis with Max von Laue on Lon- had discovered X-rays in 1895, the East. It was in Göttingen also don’s theory of superconductivity. had remained unharmed. Johannes that the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft I thought you were the right one for the studied mathematics and physics zur Förderung der Wissenschaften1 task, Becker said, adding quickly: five days a week, one day he – like was founded as a successor organi- since you are such a formalist! The op- all his fellow students – was required zation to the former Kaiser-Wilhelm portunity to work for the Nobel to shovel away debris of destroyed Gesellschaft. This brought luminar- Prize laureate was an honour and a buildings, a modest contribution to ies like Max von Laue, Werner Hei- challenge at the same time, and rebuilding Germany. After one se- senberg or Friedrich von Weizsäcker Johannes generously repressed the mester, one day out of the blue he to teaching at the university. In non-complimentary qualification. got the chance to exchange his short, Göttingen offered the young He gladly accepted, and – within a place at Würzburg with one at man from Outer Pomerania an ex- year – finished his work which was Göttingen, where, in fall 1946, he citing environment into which well received. It even would have started studying mathematics, soon Johannes immersed himself com- allowed him to earn a doctorate making, however, what he calls an pletely. The teaching style in Göt- with his prominent teacher, but Jo- adiabatic transition to physics with tingen and the university’s spirit hannes decided to leave the sublime mathematics and chemistry as minor became his models when, much spheres of theoretical physics, and fields.