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Paul Scherrer
Summary
Paul Hermann Scherrer (3 February 1890 – 25 September 1969) was a Swiss physicist. Born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, he studied at Göttingen, Germany, before becoming a lecturer there. Later, Scherrer became head of the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich.
Paul Scherrer was born in St. Gallen. In 1908, he enrolled at Swiss Federal Polytechnic (later known as ETH Zurich), changing course from Botany to Mathematics and Physics after two semesters. In 1912, Scherrer spent one semester at Königsberg University, then undertook further studies at the University of Göttingen, graduating from there with a doctorate on the Faraday Effect in the hydrogen molecule. In 1916, while still working on his dissertation, he and his tutor, Peter Debye, developed the “Debye–Scherrer powder method”, a procedure using X-rays for the structural analysis of crystals. This made an important contribution to the development of the scattering techniques that are still used in the large facilities at the Paul Scherrer Institute to this day. Debye received the Nobel Prize for chemistry for this work in 1936.
He is perhaps best known for determining the inverse relationship between the width of an x-ray diffraction peak and the crystallite size. This work was published in 1918.
ETH Zurich appointed Scherrer to the post of Professor of Experimental Physics in 1920, at the early age of 30. In 1925, he organised the first international conference of physicists to take place after the First World War. He became Principal of the Physical Institute at ETH in 1927 and focused its direction on nuclear physics, a research branch that was still coming into being at that stage. The first cyclotron at ETH Zurich was built under his direction in 1940.
Switzerland and weapons of mass destruction
Beginning in late 1944, Scherrer became close to Moe Berg and, through Berg, gave the United States information about German science and German scientists, especially related to efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.
Official source
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