Fritz Lange Physicist, inventor Date of Birth: 16.12.1899 Country: Germany

1. Fritz Lange: A Renowned Physicist and Inventor
2. Early Life and Education
3. Career in Germany
4. First Emigration to the USSR
5. Research in Kharkiv
6. Centrifuge Development and World War II
7. Post-War Research in Moscow
8. Return to Germany and Biophysics
9. Legacy

Fritz Lange: A Renowned Physicist and Inventor

Fritz Lange was a renowned physicist and inventor who played a pivotal role in the development of the centrifuge method for isotope separation.

Early Life and Education

Lange was born in Berlin, Germany, into the family of a civil servant. From 1918 to 1924, he pursued his studies at the universities of Freiburg, Kiel, and Berlin. Under the guidance of Walther Nernst, Lange completed his doctoral dissertation on low-temperature physics in 1924.

Career in Germany

For the next nine years, Lange served as Nernst's assistant at the Physical Institute of Berlin University. However, with the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933, he was forced to leave Germany due to his anti-fascist activities.

First Emigration to the USSR

Lange initially emigrated to England before accepting an invitation from A. Leipunsky to work at the Ukrainian Physico-Technical Institute (UFTI) in Kharkiv, USSR, in 1935. As part of the first group of German anti-fascists in the USSR, Lange's new Soviet documents were personally signed by Joseph Stalin.

Research in Kharkiv

In Kharkiv, Lange established the High-Voltage Pulses Laboratory within the USSR Academy of Sciences system, while the UFTI belonged to the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry. He developed high-voltage discharge tubes as neutron and X-ray sources. Notably, his laboratory employee, V.S. Shpinel, received a patent for inventing an atomic bomb.

Centrifuge Development and World War II

In 1940, Lange requested Soviet citizenship, which he received in 1937. Without submitting a dissertation, he was awarded a doctorate in physics and mathematics in April 1940. With Germany's invasion of the USSR in 1941, Lange was evacuated to Ufa, where he continued his research at the evacuated Kyiv Institute of Physics and Mathematics.

During the war, Lange embarked on developing a centrifuge for uranium enrichment under the direction of A.A. Bogomolets, the president of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. However, delays and difficulties in manufacturing the centrifuge plagued the project.

Post-War Research in Moscow

From 1943, Lange worked at the Ural Physico-Technical Institute in Sverdlovsk. In 1945, he joined I.V. Kurchatov's Laboratory No. 2 in Moscow. In December 1945, he became the head of Laboratory No. 4, which focused on implementing the magnetic method of uranium enrichment using gas centrifuges. Lange also worked in Dnepropetrovsk from 1951 to 1952.

Return to Germany and Biophysics

In 1959, Lange returned to Berlin as a permanent resident and headed the physics laboratory at the Institute of Biophysics. Later, he became its director and then the director of the Institute of Biophysics of the then East German Academy of Sciences.

Legacy

Fritz Lange was the only foreign scientist who worked in the USSR under Stalin's rule without facing any repression. His contributions to science include groundbreaking experiments in nuclear fission using lightning discharges and developments in accelerator technology. In Germany, he dedicated himself to biophysics.