A report on Max Planck Society and Fritz Haber

Max Planck, after whom the society is named.

Entrance of the administrative headquarters of the Max Planck Society in Munich

The grave of Fritz and Clara Haber (née Immerwahr) in the Hörnli graveyard of Basel, Switzerland

The KWG was one of the world's leading research organizations; its board of directors included scientists like Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, and Fritz Haber.

- Max Planck Society

In 1981, the Minerva foundation of the Max Planck Society and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) established the Fritz Haber Research Center for Molecular Dynamics, based at the Institute of Chemistry of the Hebrew University.

- Fritz Haber

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Former Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Chemistry in Berlin, the place at which nuclear fission was first detected

Kaiser Wilhelm Society

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German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911.

Former Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Biology, Berlin

Opening of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut in Berlin-Dahlem, 1913. From right: Adolf von Harnack, Friedrich von Ilberg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Carl Neuberg, August von Trott zu Solz

Its functions were taken over by the Max Planck Society.

The institutions were to be under the guidance of prominent directors, which included the physicists and chemists Walther Bothe, Peter Debye, Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber and Otto Hahn; a board of trustees also provided guidance.

Otto Hahn

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German chemist who was a pioneer in the fields of radioactivity and radiochemistry.

Ernest Rutherford at McGill University, Montreal 1905

Hahn and Meitner, 1913, in the chemical laboratory of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. When a colleague she did not recognise said that they had met before, Meitner replied: "You probably mistake me for Professor Hahn."

Physicists and chemists in Berlin in 1920. Front row, left to right: Hertha Sponer, Albert Einstein, Ingrid Franck, James Franck, Lise Meitner, Fritz Haber, and Otto Hahn. Back row, left to right: Walter Grotrian, Wilhelm Westphal,
Otto von Baeyer, Peter Pringsheim and Gustav Hertz

Former Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry building in Berlin. Heavily damaged by bombing during the Second World War, it was restored and became part of the Free University of Berlin. It was renamed the Otto Hahn Building in 1956, and the Hahn-Meitner Building in 2010.

Marble plaque in Latin by Professor Massimo Ragnolini, commemorating the honeymoon of Otto Hahn and his wife Edith at Punta San Vigilio, Lake Garda, Italy, in March and April 1913

The decay chain of actinium. Alpha decay shifts two elements down; beta decay shifts one element up.

This was touted for many years as the table and experimental apparatus with which Otto Hahn discovered nuclear fission in 1938. The table and instruments are representative of the ones used, but not necessarily the originals, and would not have been together on the one table in the same room. Pressure from historians, scientists and feminists caused the museum to alter the display in 1988 to acknowledge Lise Meitner, Otto Frisch and Fritz Strassmann.

Plaque commemorating Hahn and Strassmann's discovery of fission in Berlin (unveiled in 1956)

5 DM coin, Germany, honouring Hahn and his discovery of fission, 1979

Monument in Berlin-Dahlem, in front of the Otto-Hahn-Platz

Otto Hahn on a stamp of the German Democratic Republic, 1979

During World War I he served with a Landwehr regiment on the Western Front, and with the chemical warfare unit headed by Fritz Haber on the Western, Eastern and Italian fronts, earning the Iron Cross (2nd Class) for his part in the First Battle of Ypres.

Hahn served as the last president of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science in 1946 and as the founding president of its successor, the Max Planck Society from 1948 to 1960.

Max Planck

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German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Max Planck's signature at ten years of age

A side portrait of Planck as a young adult, c. 1878

Plaque at the Humboldt University of Berlin: "Max Planck, discoverer of the elementary quantum of action h, taught in this building from 1889 to 1928."

Planck in 1918, the year he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum theory

From left to right: W. Nernst, A. Einstein, Planck, R.A. Millikan and von Laue at a dinner given by von Laue in Berlin on 11 November 1931

Vorlesungen über die Theorie der Wärmestrahlung, 1906

In 1948, the German scientific institution Kaiser Wilhelm Society (of which Planck was twice president) was renamed Max Planck Society (MPG).

In October 1920, he and Fritz Haber established the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (Emergency Organization of German Science), aimed at providing financial support for scientific research.