Otto Haxel


Otto Haxel was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project. After the war, he was on the staff of the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen. From 1950 to 1974, he was an ordinarius professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg, where he fostered the use of nuclear physics in environmental physics; this led to the founding of the Institute of Environmental Physics in 1975. During 1956 and 1957, he was a member of the Nuclear Physics Working Group of the German Atomic Energy Commission. From 1970 to 1975, he was the Scientific and Technical Managing Director of the Karlsruhe Research Center.
Haxel was a signatory of the Manifesto of the Göttingen Eighteen.

Education

From 1927 to 1933, Haxel studied at the Technische Hochschule München and the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen. He received his doctorate in 1933, under Hans Geiger at the University of Tübingen. From 1933 to 1936, Haxel was Geiger’s teaching assistant there, and he completed his Habilitation in 1936.

Career

In 1936, Geiger, as the successor to Gustav Hertz, became an ordinarius professor and department head at the Technische Hochschule Berlin. He specialized in studies of neutron absorption in uranium. Haxel was called up for military service in early 1942. He was put in charge of a group doing nuclear research for the German Navy under Admiral Rhein, who had formerly been a submarine commander.
From 1946 to 1950, Haxel was a staff assistant to Werner Heisenberg at the Max-Planck Institut für Physik, in Göttingen. While there, he and Fritz Houtermans collaborated; Houtermans was at the II. Physikalischen Institut of the University of Göttingen. Haxel also worked on the development of “magic numbers” in nuclear shell theory with J. Hans D. Jensen at the Institut für theoretische Physik, Heidelberg, and Hans Suess at the Institut für physikalische Chemie, Hamburg. In 1949, Haxel was also appointed supernumerary professor at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.
From 1950 to 1974, Haxel was an ordinarius professor of physics at the University of Heidelberg. At the University of Heidelberg, Haxel was also director of the II. Physikalischen Institut. In the 1950s, mainly through the impetus of Haxel, environmental physics was developed there through the application of nuclear physics. This led to the founding of the Institut für Umweltphysik in 1975, with Karl-Otto Münnich as its founding director.
During 1956 and 1957, Haxel was a member of the Arbeitskreis Kernphysik of the Fachkommission II „Forschung und Nachwuchs“ of the Deutschen Atomkommission. Other members of the Nuclear Physics Working Group in both 1956 and 1957 were: Werner Heisenberg, Hans Kopfermann, Fritz Bopp, Walther Bothe, Wolfgang Gentner, Willibald Jentschke, Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, Josef Mattauch, Wolfgang Riezler, Wilhelm Walcher, and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Wolfgang Paul was also a member of the group during 1957.
From 1970 to 1975, Haxel was the wissenschaftlich-technischen Geschäftsführer of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe.
Haxel was a signatory of the manifesto of the Göttinger Achtzehn.

Personal

Haxel’s friend, Fritz Houtermans was married four times. Charlotte Riefenstahl, a physicist educated at the University of Göttingen, was his first and third wife in four marriages. In February 1944, Houtermans married Ilse Bartz, a chemical engineer; they worked together during the war and published a paper. Houtermans divorced Ilse and remarried Charlotte in August 1953. Haxel married Ilse after her divorce from Houtermans.

Honors

The Freundeskreis des Forschungszentrums Karlsruhe e.V. established and awards the Otto-Haxel-Preis, which is given for achievements in the nuclear energy industry.
In 1980, Haxel was awarded the Otto-Hahn-Preis der Stadt Frankfurt am Main for his advocacy of and work on harnessing nuclear energy production.

Internal Reports

The following reports were published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte, an internal publication of the German Uranverein. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.