Max Volmer

Max Volmer married Lotte Pusch, a physical chemist by profession.

He died on June 3, 1965, in Postdam, at the age of 80.

At the Technical University of Berlin, the Max Volmer Laboratory for Biophysical Chemistry was named in his honor.

Max Volmer was born on May 3 1885 in Hilden located in North Rhine Westphalia, Germany.

In 1905, he enrolled at the Phillips University of Marburg and graduated three years later with a bachelors’ degree. Subsequently, he studied at the University of Leipzig and in 1910, he achieved his doctorate from the university. His doctoral thesis was based on his work on photochemical reactions in high vacuums.

After attaining his doctorate, from the University of Leipzig, he was appointed in the capacity of an assistant lecturer at the same university in 1912. The following year, he completed his Habilitation, and became a Privatdozent at the University.

He joined the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in 1916 and worked on military-related research. In 1918, he joined the research wing of the industrial firm named Aurgesellschaft in their headquarters in Berlin and worked there for two years.

He collaborated with Otto Stern to invent a device known as the mercury steam ejector in 1919. Consequently, he and Stern co-authored a paper which resulted in the attribution of the Stern–Volmer equation and constant. The following year, the University of Hamburg appointed him as the extraordinarius professor of electrochemistry and physical chemistry.

In 1922, Max Volner was appointed ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry Institute of the Technische Hochschule Berlin. During the period he spent at the Technische Hochshule Berlin, he discovered the phenomenon of Volmer diffusion which involved the migration of absorbed molecules.

He expanded on the work done by John Alfred Valentine Butler to produce the Butler-Volmer equation in 1930 and this particular work spawned a new branch of science known as phenomenological kinetic electrochemistry.

His most important work in his long scientific career is without doubt his work on the Butler-Volmer equation, which he produced in 1930 after going through the work that had been done by Butler. It laid the foundations for phenomenological kinetic electrochemistry.