Hans Kopfermann

Hans Kopfermann (1895 to 1963) was a German atomic and nuclear physicist who devoted his career to spectroscopic investigations and did pioneering work in measuring nuclear spin. He took his doctorate at Gottingen under James Franck in 1925, worked with Rudolf Ladenburg in Berlin-Dahlem, spent a year under Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, and held chairs at Kiel from 1937 and at Heidelberg from 1953. His 1940 book Kernmomente influenced the next generation of nuclear physicists. During the Second World War he was a principal in the German nuclear energy project, the Uranverein, where he and a few physicists under his direction investigated and developed isotope separation techniques, including a mass spectrograph and electromagnetic mass spectrometry for separating uranium isotopes. In 1956 and 1957 he was vice-chairman of the Nuclear Physics Working Group of the German Atomic Energy Commission, and he also served on the council of CERN.