Arnold Eucken

Arnold Eucken
Eucken, c. 1905
Born	Arnold Thomas Eucken 3 July 1884 (1884-07-03) Jena, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, German Empire
Died	16 June 1950 (1950-06-17) (aged 65) Seebruck, West Germany
Known for	Eucken's law Eucken–Polanyi potential theory
Father	Rudolf Christoph Eucken
Scientific career
Fields	Physical chemistry
Thesis	Der stationäre Zustand zwischen polarisierten Wasserstoffelektrode  (1906)
Doctoral advisor	Walther Nernst
Doctoral students	Manfred Eigen

Arnold Thomas Eucken (3 July 1884 – 16 June 1950) was a German chemist and physicist. He is known for his contribution to thermodynamics and molecular physics, in particular, for the discovery of Eucken's law of thermal conductivity, the measurement of the heat capacity of hydrogen at low temperatures, and the development of the Eucken–Polanyi potential theory of adsorption.

Life

Arnold Thomas Eucken was born in Jena, son of the philosopher and later Nobel Prize in Literature laureate Rudolf Christoph Eucken, in Jena. A maternal great grandfather was the physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck. His brother Walter became an economist.

Arnold Eucken went to the humanist high school in Jena and studied Physics and Mathematics at the Kiel University, University of Jena and University of Berlin. In 1905 he began to work in Berlin under Walther Nernst on the energy states of hydrogen and received a doctorate in 1906.[1]

He habilitated in 1911[2] and after the Italo-Turkish War he joined back in 1915 Eucken at the Technische Hochschule Breslau, and from 1930 at the University of Göttingen as a successor of Gustav Tammann. After "the seizure of power" of the National Socialists, Eucken became a member of the Nazi Party in 1933. A major contribution was a "Textbook of Chemical Physics" first publ,ished in 1930.[3][4]

One of his last PhD students, Manfred Eigen won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967.[1]

Eucken killed himself in Seebruck on 16 June 1950.[5]

Work

In 1908, while working with Nernst, Eucken developed a vacuum calorimeter to study heat capacity hydrogen molecules. His measurements published in 1912, confirmed that the heat capacity of hydrogen drops at low temperatures (about 40 K). This confirmed Nernst's theory of diatomic molecules as quantum rigid rotors and provided a test for quantum mechanics.[6]

Eucken's 1911 work on thermal conduction, demonstrated that in dielectric systems, the thermal conductivity of the crystal in inversely proportional to the temperature of the crystal. This relation is sometimes known as Eucken's law.[7]

Eucken was also coined the term adsorption potential and was the first to publish a theory of potential theory of adsorption in 1914.[8]

See also

• Spin isomers of hydrogen

References

1. "Arnold Eucken". www.nernst.de. Retrieved 2025-02-11.
2. http://www.chemgeo.uni-jena.de/chegemedia/Fakult%C3%A4t/Geschichte/Chemiehistorische+Notizen/14_3+Arnold+Eucken.pdf Archived 2018-03-01 at the Wayback Machine (in german)
3. Wicke, E. (1984). "Arnold Thomas Eucken, Pionier der Chemischen Verfahrenstechnik". Naturwissenschaften (in German). 71 (9): 439–445. Bibcode:1984NW.....71..439W. doi:10.1007/BF00455896. ISSN 0028-1042. S2CID 46537916.
4. Franck, Ulrich (1959). "Eucken, Arnold". Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 4. p. 670.
5. Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, S. 140.
6. Gearhart, Clayton A. (2010-03-01). ""Astonishing Successes" and "Bitter Disappointment": The Specific Heat of Hydrogen in Quantum Theory". Archive for History of Exact Sciences. 64 (2): 113–202. doi:10.1007/s00407-009-0053-2. ISSN 1432-0657.
7. Goldsmid, Julian (2017-05-02). The Physics of Thermoelectric Energy Conversion. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. ISBN 978-1-68174-641-8.
8. Polanyi, Michael (1963-09-13). "The Potential Theory of Adsorption". Science. 141 (3585): 1010–1013. doi:10.1126/science.141.3585.1010.