British physicist
Herbert Fröhlich (9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991)
FRS
[1] was a German-born British physicist.
[6]
[7]
Career
In 1927, Fröhlich entered
Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich to study physics, and received his doctorate under
Arnold Sommerfeld in 1930.
[2] His first position was as
Privatdozent at the
University of Freiburg . Due to rising
anti-Semitism and the
Deutsche Physik movement under
Adolf Hitler , and at the invitation of
Yakov Frenkel , Fröhlich went to the
Soviet Union , in 1933, to work at the
Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in
Leningrad . During the
Great Purge following the murder of
Sergei Kirov , he fled to England in 1935. Except for a short visit to the
Netherlands and a brief internment during
World War II , he worked in
Nevill Francis Mott 's
[1] department, at the
University of Bristol , until 1948, rising to the position of
Reader . At the invitation of
James Chadwick , he took the Chair for Theoretical Physics at the
University of Liverpool .
[1]
[8]
In 1950,
Bell Telephone Laboratories offered Fröhlich their endowed professorial position at
Princeton University . However, at Liverpool he had a purely research post which was attractive to him. He was then newly married to an American,
Fanchon Angst , who was studying linguistic philosophy at
Somerville College, Oxford under
P. F. Strawson , and who did not want to return to the United States at that time.
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
From 1973, he was Professor of
Solid State Physics at the
University of Salford , however, all the while maintaining an office at the University of Liverpool, where he gained
emeritus status in 1976 and remained there until his death. During 1981, he was a visiting professor at
Purdue University .
[14]
[15] He was nominated for the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 and in 1964.
[16]
Fröhlich, who pursued theoretical research notably in the fields of
superconductivity and
bioelectrodynamics , proposed a theory of coherent excitations in biological systems known as Fröhlich coherence.
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21] A system that attains this
coherent state is known as a Fröhlich condensate, similar to
room-temperature
non-equilibrium
Bose–Einstein condensation of quasiparticles .
[22]
[23]
[24]
[25]
[26]
Honours and awards
Fröhlich was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1951 .
[1] In 1972, he was awarded the
Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft
Max-Planck Medal and in 1981 an Honorary Doctorate from
Purdue University .
[27]
Books by Fröhlich
Herbert Fröhlich Elektronentheorie der Metalle. (Struktur und Eigenschaften der Materie in Eigendarstellung, Bd.18). (Springer, 1936, 1969)
Herbert Fröhlich Elektronentheorie der Metalle (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, First US edition, in German, 1943)
ISBN
1-114-56648-9
Herbert Fröhlich Theory of Dielectrics: Dielectric Constant and Dielectric Loss (Clarendon Press, 1949, 1958)
Herbert Fröhlich and F. Kremer Coherent Excitations in Biological Systems (Springer-Verlag, 1983)
ISBN
978-3-642-69186-7
Herbert Fröhlich, editor Biological Coherence and Response to External Stimuli (Springer, 1988)
ISBN
978-3-642-73309-3
Personal life
Fröhlich was the son of Fanny Frida (née Schwarz) and Jakob Julius Fröhlich, members of an old-established Jewish family in their home town of Rexingen, and the brother of
Albrecht Fröhlich , a mathematician who was elected
Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976.
[28]
[29]
References
^
a
b
c
d
e
Mott, N. (1992). "Herbert Fröhlich 9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991".
Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society . 38 : 145–162.
doi :
10.1098/rsbm.1992.0008 .
S2CID
123600343 .
^
a
b
c
Herbert Fröhlich at the
Mathematics Genealogy Project
^
a
b
c
Measuring state-of-order by dielectric response: A comprehensive review on Fröhlich entropy estimation – J. Parravicini, GB. Parravicini, Measuring state-of-order by dielectric response: A comprehensive review on Fröhlich entropy estimation, Results in Physics, v. 28, 104571 (2021)
^
a
b
c Parravicini, J. (2018). "Thermodynamic potentials in anisotropic and nonlinear dielectrics". Physica B . 541 : 54–60.
Bibcode :
2018PhyB..541...54P .
doi :
10.1016/j.physb.2018.04.029 .
S2CID
125817506 .
^
Macroscopic response and directional disorder dynamics in chemically substituted ferroelectrics – J. Parravicini, E. DelRe, A.J. Agranat, GB. Parravicini, Macroscopic response and directional disorder dynamics in chemically substituted ferroelectrics, Phys. Rev. B, v. 93, 094203 (2016)
^ Terence W. Barrett and Herbert A. Pohl Energy Transfer Dynamics: Studies and Essays in Honor of Herbert Frohlich on His Eightieth Birthday (Springer-Verlag, 1987)
ISBN
978-3-540-17502-5
^ GJ Hyland and Peter Rowlands (editors) Herbert Frohlich FRS: A Physicist Ahead of his Time. (University of Liverpool, 2006, 2nd edition 2008.)
ISBN
978-0-906370-57-5
^
Biography of Herbert Frohlich (1905–1991) – Bogoliubov Laboratory of Theoretical Physics
^
"Fanchon Frohlich" . Fanchon Frohlich Artist Philosopher . 2020. Retrieved 6 April 2020 .
^ Hyland, Gerard (8 September 2016).
"Fanchon Fröhlich obituary" . The Guardian . Retrieved 6 April 2020 .
^ Hyland, G.J. (2015). Herbert Fröhlich: A Physicist Ahead of His Time . Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 120–121.
^
"Audrey F Aungst in the 1930 United States Federal Census" . Ancestry.com . 2 April 1930. Retrieved 6 April 2020 .
^
"Obituary for JOSEPH AUNCST [sic] (Aged 74)" . The Courier (Waterloo, Iowa) . 28 June 1944. Retrieved 6 April 2020 .
^
Fröhlich – Purdue University
^
Fröhlich, Herbert FRS (1905–1991), Physicist
Archived 4 March 2016 at the
Wayback Machine – University of Liverpool
^
Nobel Prize Nominations
^ Fröhlich, H. (March 1968).
"Bose condensation of strongly excited longitudinal electric modes" (PDF) . Physics Letters A . 26 (9): 402–403.
Bibcode :
1968PhLA...26..402F .
doi :
10.1016/0375-9601(68)90242-9 .
^ Fröhlich, H. (September 1968).
"Long-Range Coherence and Energy Storage in Biological Systems" (PDF) . International Journal of Quantum Chemistry . 2 (5): 641–649.
Bibcode :
1968IJQC....2..641F .
doi :
10.1002/qua.560020505 .
^ Fröhlich, H. (July 1977).
"Long-range coherence in biological systems" (PDF) . La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento . 7 (3): 399–418.
Bibcode :
1977NCimR...7..399F .
doi :
10.1007/BF02747279 .
S2CID
121598507 .
^ Fröhlich, Herbert; Kremer, Friedrich, eds. (1983). Coherent Excitations in Biological Systems . Proceedings in Life Sciences.
Springer-Verlag .
doi :
10.1007/978-3-642-69186-7 .
ISBN
978-3-642-69188-1 .
S2CID
27896466 .
^ Fröhlich, Herbert, ed. (1988). Biological Coherence and Response to External Stimuli . Springer-Verlag.
doi :
10.1007/978-3-642-73309-3 .
ISBN
978-3-642-73311-6 .
^ Moskalenko, S. A.; Pokatilov, E. P; Miglei, M. F.; Kiselyova, E. S. (October 1979).
"Bose condensation of phonons in biological systems" (PDF) . Quantum Chemistry . 16 (4): 745–752.
doi :
10.1002/qua.560160405 .
^ Wu, T. M. (October 1994).
"Chapter 16: Fröhlich's Theory of Coherent Excitation — A Retrospective" (PDF) . In Ho, Mae-Wan; Popp, Fritz-Albert; Warnke, Ulrich (eds.). Bioelectrodynamics and Biocommunication . World Scientific. pp. 387–409.
doi :
10.1142/9789814503822_0016 .
^ Catherine Meyers (13 October 2015).
"Quantum Coherent-like State Observed in a Biological Protein for the First Time" . American Institute of Physics .
^ Katona, Gergely; et al. (October 2015).
"Terahertz radiation induces non-thermal structural changes associated with Fröhlich condensation in a protein crystal" . Structural Dynamics . 2 (5): 054702.
doi :
10.1063/1.4931825 .
PMC
4711649 .
PMID
26798828 .
^ Zhang, Zhedong; Agarwal, Girish S.; Scully, Marlan O. (19 April 2019). "Quantum Fluctuations in the Fröhlich Condensate of Molecular Vibrations Driven Far From Equilibrium". Physical Review Letters . 122 (15): 158101.
arXiv :
1810.07883 .
Bibcode :
2019PhRvL.122o8101Z .
doi :
10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.158101 .
PMID
31050540 .
S2CID
53322370 .
^
Honorary Doctorate Recipient – Purdue University
^ Hyland, G.J. (2015). Herbert Fröhlich: A Physicist Ahead of His Time . Cham, Switzerland: Springer. p. 5.
^
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