Gerhard Herzberg

@Physicists, Facts and Personal Life

Gerhard Herzberg was a Germany-born Canadian physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1971

Dec 25, 1904

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Biography

Personal Details

  • Birthday: December 25, 1904
  • Died on: March 3, 1999
  • Nationality: Canadian, German
  • Famous: Scientists, Physicists, Chemists, Physical Chemists
  • Spouses: Elisabeth Tenthoff, Luise Oettinger
  • Siblings: Walter
  • Known as: Gerhard Heinrich Friedrich Otto Julius Herzberg

Gerhard Herzberg born at

Hamburg, Imperial Germany

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Birth Place

He married Luise Oettinger, a Jew spectroscopist, on December 30, 1929.

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Personal Life

He had had a son named Paul Albin and a daughter named Agnes Margaret from this marriage.

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Personal Life

He married Monika Elisabeth Tenthoff on March 21, 1972 after his first wife died in 1971 a few months before he received the Nobel Prize. He had a daughter named Luise from this marriage.

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Personal Life

Gerhard Herzberg was born in Hamburg, Germany, on December 25, 1904. His father was Albin H. Herzberg and his mother was Ella Biber Herzberg.

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Childhood & Early Life

He had an elder brother named Walter.

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Childhood & Early Life

His early life was very difficult as his father died in 1915 and his mother had to immigrate to America in 1922 to work as a housekeeper there.

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Childhood & Early Life

He attended the ‘Liebig Oberrealschule’ high school in Frankfurt from 1915 to 1916.

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Childhood & Early Life

He joined the ‘Johanneum Realgymnasium’ high school in Hamburg in 1924 from where he obtained an ‘Abitur’ which was required for admission into a university.

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Childhood & Early Life

Gerhard Herzberg returned to Germany and joined the ‘Darmstadt University of Technology’ as a ‘Privatdozent’ or lecturer in 1930 without getting any remuneration and worked there till 1935. Financial support came through fees from lectures and from the ‘Emergency Association of German Science’.

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Career

In 1935 he left Germany and moved to Canada as the Nazi regime in Germany debarred people with Jewish wives from their Universities.

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Career

He joined the ‘University of Saskatchewan, Canada’ in 1935 as a Research Professor of Physics and taught there till 1945.

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Career

In 1941 he became the first scientist to prove that ‘themethylidyne ions (CH+)’ were present in the interstellar clouds or the gas occupying the space between two stars.

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Career

In 1945 he joined the ‘Yerkes Observatory’ under the ‘University of Chicago’ as a professor of Spectroscopy and held that post till 1948.

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Career

His book, ‘Atomic Spectra and Atomic Structure’ was published in 1937.

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Major Works

His book ‘Spectra of Diatomic Molecules’ came out in 1939 while ‘Infrared and Raman Spectra of Polyatomic Molecules’ was published in 1945.

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Major Works

His next book ‘Electronic Spectra of Polyatomic Molecules’ was published in 1966.

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Major Works