Theodor Förster

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Theodor Förster (May 15, 1910 – May 20, 1974) was a German physical chemist.

Theodor Förster undertook a Ph.D. under Erwin Madelung at the University of Frankfurt am Main (1933). In the same year he joined the Nazi Party and the SA.[1] After his habilitation (in 1940) he became a lecturer in Leipzig. In Leipzig he worked closely with Peter Debye, Werner Heisenberg, and .[2] Following his research and teaching activities in Leipzig, he became a professor at the , in occupied Poland (1942).[2]

From 1947 to 1951 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen before becoming a professor at the University of Stuttgart.[2]

Among his greatest achievements is his contribution to the understanding (1946) of FRET (Förster resonance energy transfer). The term , which is related to the FRET phenomenon, is named after Theodor Förster.[2]

He also proposed the Förster cycle to predict the acid dissociation constant of a photoacid.[2] He also discovered excimer formation in solutions of pyrene.[2][3]

Work[]

  • Förster, Theodor: Fluoreszenz organischer Verbindungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1950. – Unveränd. Nachdr. d. 1. Aufl., im Literaturverz. erg. um spätere Veröff. d. Autors. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982 – ISBN 3-525-42312-8*

Literature[]

  • A. Weller: Nachruf auf Theodor Förster. In: Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie 78 (1974) p. 969 [with Porträt].
  • George Porter: Some reflections on the work of Theodor Förster. In: Die Naturwissenschaften 63 (1976) 5, p. 207–211.

References[]

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Zweite aktualisierte Auflage, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 158.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Kramer, Horst E. A.; Fischer, Peter (9 November 2010). "The Scientific Work of Theodor Förster: A Brief Sketch of his Life and Personality". ChemPhysChem. 12 (3): 555–558. doi:10.1002/cphc.201000733. PMID 21344592.
  3. ^ Förster, Theodor (May 1969). "Excimers". Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English. 8 (5): 333–343. doi:10.1002/anie.196903331.
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