Bothe, Walter Wilhelm Georg Franz

SUBJECT AREA: Weapons and armour

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b. 8 January 1891 Oranienburg, Berlin, Germany

d. 8 February 1957 Heidelberg, Germany

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German nuclear scientist.

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Bothe studied under Max Planck at the University of Berlin, gaining his doctorate in 1914. After military service during the First World War, he resumed his investigations into nuclear physics and achieved a breakthrough in 1929 when he developed a method of studying cosmic radiation by placing one Geiger counter on top of another. From this he evolved the means of high-speed counting known as "coincidence counting". The following year, in conjunction with Hans Becker, Bothe made a Further stride forward when they identified a very penetrative neutral particle by bombarding beryllium with alpha particles; this was a significant advance towards creating nuclear energy in that the neutral particle was what Chadwick later identified as the neutron.

In 1934 Bothe's achievements were recognized by his appointment as Director of the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, although this was after Planck himself had been deposed because of his Jewish sympathies. Bothe did, however, become primarily involved in Germany's pursuit of the atomic bomb and in 1944 constructed Germany's first cyclotron for accelerating nuclear particles. By that time Germany was faced with military defeat and Bothe was not able to develop his ideas further. Even so, for his work in the field of cosmic radiation Bothe shared the 1954 Nobel Prize for Physics with the naturalized Briton (formerly German) Max Born, whose subject was statistical mechanics.

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Principal Honours and Distinctions

Co-winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics 1954.

CM