Victor Francis Hess

In 1920, Victor Francis Hess married Marie Bertha Warner Breisk. Since she was a Jew, Hess had to relocate to the USA in 1938 on the wake of persecution by the Nazis. He lived there till the end of his life.

In 1944, Hess became a naturalized citizen of the USA. Marie Bertha died of cancer in 1955. In the same year, he married Bertha’s nurse Elizabeth M. Hoenke. The couple remained married until his death in 1964. He did not have any children.

Towards the end of his life Hess was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. He died from it on 17 December 1964, in Mount Vernon, New York.

Victor Francis Hess was born on the 24 June 1883, in Waldstein Castle, near Peggau in Steiermark, Austria. His father, Vinzens Hess, was a forester under the service of Prince Louis of Oettingen-Wallerstein. His mother’s name was Serafine Edle von Grossbauer-Waldstätt.

In 1893, ten year old Victor was sent to Gymnasium in Graz for his secondary education. After passing out from there in 1901, he entered the University of Graz with Physics as his major. He then earned his graduate degree in 1905 and post graduate degree in 1908 and finally the PhD degree in 1910.

Victor Francis Hess began his career with a short stint at the Physics Institute of Vienna. Here he worked under Professor Von Schweidler, who was the first to introduce young Hess to the new discoveries that were being made in the field of radioactivity.

In 1911, he joined Institute for Radium Research, a newly opened research institute under Austrian Academy of Sciences. There he worked under Stefan Meyer, an Austrian Scientist involved in research on radioactivity and also under Franz Exner, a pioneer in the study of radiation.

Under them, he began his research on gamma rays. At that time it was believed that air was slight conductor of electricity because of ionization of gamma rays. It was assumed that the earth was the source of this radiation. But, preliminary findings suggested that the ionization increased with altitude and so the earth could not be the source.

A number of renowned scientists began to experiment on this. Hess first designed a new device that was far more precise than previously used. He then went up in balloons to measure the degree of ionization, once in 1911 and seven times in 1912 and once in 1913. Each time, he measured the radiation systematically.

Hess found that the level of radiation decreased up to an altitude of one kilometer and then began to increase. What is more, the radiation is almost double at an altitude of 5 km in comparison with the level of radiation at sea level. Therefore, the earth could not be the source.

Although Hess had undertaken research work all through his life and had made important contributions to an understanding of radiation and its effects on the human body, discovery of the cosmic rays is his most important work. It opened the door to many new discoveries in the field of nuclear physics as well as particle or high energy physics.