Born Schwiebus (Świebodzin, Poland), 28 December 1887
Died Munich, Germany, 5 August 1946
Werner Kolhörster helped bring modern, quantitative methods to the study of cosmic rays.
Kolhörster earned his Ph.D. in physics under the direction of Friedrich Ernst Dorn at the University of Halle in 1911. He then became interested in the discovery of cosmic rays in the Earth's upper atmosphere by Austrian physicist Victor Hess , achieved by means of balloon ascensions (up to 5‐km altitude) with an electrometer. Kolhörster extended the balloon‐borne measurements up to 10‐km altitude and fully demonstrated the validity of Hess's conclusions. He remained an assistant at the Physical Institute in Halle until the outbreak of World War I.
After the war, Kolhörster was forced into secondary teaching to support himself, at the Friedrich Werdersche Oberrealschule (circa 1920–1924) and the Sophien Realgymnasium, Berlin (circa1924–1928). Nonetheless, Kolhörster became a guest investigator at the...
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Selected References
Anon. (1946). “Werner Kolhörster.” Physikalische Blätter 2: 110.
Flügge, Siegfried (1948). “Werner Kolhörster.” Zeitschrift für Naturforschung 3A: 690–691.
Kolhörster, Werner, and Leo Tuwim (1934). Physakalische Probleme der Höhenstrahlung. Leipzig: Academic Verlagsgesellschaft.
Poggendorff, J. C. “Kolhörster.” In Biographisch‐literarisches Handwörtenbuch. Vol. 5 (1926): 664–665; Vol. 6 (1937): 1365–1366; Vol. 7a (1958): 859–860. Leipzig and Berlin.
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Marché, J.D. (2007). Kolhörster, Werner Heinrich Julius Gustav. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_789
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