Fritz Rohrlich

Rohrlich was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1921. He was the son of Illy (née Schwarz) and Egon Rohrlich, a lawyer.{{cite journal |last=Jammer |first=Max |authorlink=Max Jammer |title=Fritz Rohrlich and His Work—On the Occasion of His Retirement |date=1994 |journal=Foundations of Physics |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=209–216 |url=http://fafnir.phyast.pitt.edu/tree/RohrlichBio.pdf |doi=10.1007/bf02313122|bibcode=1994FoPh...24..209J |s2cid=123278316 }} His family was Jewish. His education was terminated after Austria was annexed by Germany in March, 1938 (the "Anschluss"). For a time he did forced labor.{{cite book |first=Friedrich |last=Stadler |title=Vertriebene Vernunft. Emigration und Exil österreichischer Wissenschaft |language=de |publisher=LIT-Verlag |location=Münster |date=2004 |isbn=3-8258-7372-2 |page=671 |trans-title=Displaced Reason. Emigration and Exile of Austrian Science}} In 1939 he emigrated to study at the Technion in Haifa in modern-day Israel, where he was awarded a Diplom in industrial chemistry in 1943. He then began work in Jerusalem as a technician for the British armed forces. He was able to concurrently study physics with Giulio Racah at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which was his ultimate goal.{{cite book |title=Handbuch österreichischer Autorinnen und Autoren jüdischer Herkunft: 18. bis 20. Jahrhundert |language=de |trans-title=Handbook of Austrian Authors of Jewish Heritage |editor1-first=Susanne |editor1-last=Blumesberger |editor2-first=Michael |editor2-last=Doppelhofer |editor3-first=Gabriele |editor3-last=Mauthe |chapter=8652 - Rohrlich, Fritz |page=1131 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QnrPXZ_eT44C&pg=PA1131 |isbn=9783110949001 |publisher=Walter de Gruyter |date=2011}} In June 1942, his parents became victims of The Holocaust; they had been deported to the Sobibór Extermination Camp by the authorities in Austria.{{cite web |title=Egon Rohrlich - Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database |url=https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=5203362 |publisher=The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=2018-12-05}} {{cite web |title=Cilly Rohrlich - Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database |url=https://www.ushmm.org/online/hsv/person_view.php?PersonId=5203361 |publisher=The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |accessdate=2018-12-05}}

In 1946, Rohrlich was accepted for graduate studies at Harvard University in the United States. He received a master's degree in 1947 and a doctorate in 1948; his doctoral thesis advisor was Julian Schwinger. At Harvard, he was also a teaching assistant for Norman Foster Ramsey. In 1948, he joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; as Max Jammer wrote much later, "For Rohrlich this was one of the highlights of his life: he met Einstein, Pais, Placzek, Uhlenbeck, Dyson, and the mathematicians Gödel, von Neumann, and

Weyl; he was present when von Laue and Yukawa visited the Institute." In 1949, he became a research associate with Hans Bethe at Cornell University. There he met Richard Feynman, which revived his interest in the problems of divergences in the classical electrodynamic theory for charged particles, for which he later became a leading expert. At the same time, he also made significant contributions to the establishment of early quantum electrodynamics, and in particular he demonstrated the equivalence of the various formulations for spin-0 particles, after Freeman Dyson had demonstrated the version of spin-½ particles).

In 1951, he became an assistant professor at Princeton University. There he gave lectures on quantum electrodynamics from which his seminal textbook, written with Josef-Maria Jauch, emerged. In 1953 he became an associate professor (and colleague of Jauch) at the University of Iowa; the text The theory of Photons and Electrons was first published in 1955. In 1963 he became a professor at Syracuse University, where he spent the rest of his career; his text Classical Charged Particles was first published in 1965. In addition to his work in theories of quantum and classical electrodynamics, in the early 1960s he also investigated (with T. Fulton and Louis Witten) the problem of the radiation of the free-falling charged particle in the general theory of relativity and the question of whether this violated the principle of equivalence.{{Cite journal |last=Rohrlich |first=F |date=May 1963 |title=The principle of equivalence |url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/0003491663900514 |journal=Annals of Physics |language=en |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=169–191 |doi=10.1016/0003-4916(63)90051-4|bibcode=1963AnPhy..22..169R }}{{Cite journal |last1=Fulton |first1=Thomas |last2=Rohrlich |first2=Fritz |date=1960-04-01 |title=Classical radiation from a uniformly accelerated charge |url=https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0003-4916%2860%2990105-6 |journal=Annals of Physics |language=en |volume=9 |issue=4 |pages=499–517 |doi=10.1016/0003-4916(60)90105-6 |bibcode=1960AnPhy...9..499F |issn=0003-4916}} In the 1980s, he put his focus on the philosophy of science, and wrote the text From Paradox to Reality: Our Basic Concepts of the Physical World. In 1991 he retired and became a professor emeritus. He remained active in research for many years thereafter, and in 2009 was honored by the lifetime "outstanding referee" designation of the American Physical Society.{{cite web |title=Outstanding Referees |url=https://journals.aps.org/OutstandingReferees |publisher=American Physical Society |accessdate=2018-12-04}}

In 1957 he was selected as a fellow of the American Physical Society.{{cite web |title=APS Fellow Archive |publisher=American Physical Society |accessdate=2018-12-03 |url=https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/archive-all.cfm?initial=R }} Rohrlich's citation was not archived. In 1974 he received a Fulbright Award to visit the University of Graz, and in 1996 he received an honorary doctorate from that university.{{cite web |title=PAST MEMBER: Fritz Rohrlich |publisher=Institute of Advanced Study |location=Princeton |accessdate=2018-12-04 |url=https://www.ias.edu/scholars/fritz-rohrlich}}{{cite web |title=Honours |publisher=University of Graz |accessdate=2018-12-04 |url=https://www.uni-graz.at/en/university/information/about-the-university/honours/}} Rohrlich received an honorary doctorate in natural science Doctores rerum naturalium honoris causa.

Rohrlich died November 14, 2018, in DeWitt, New York.

• Thomas Fulton, Fritz Rohrlich. [http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960AnPhy...9..499F Classical radiation from a uniformly accelerating charge ]. In: Annals of Physics , Vol. 9 (1960), pp. 499–517.
• An elementary derivation of E = mc². In: American Journal of Physics, Volume 58, Issue 4 (1990), p. 348.
• [https://www.classe.cornell.edu/~pt267/files/teaching/P121W2006/ChargedSphereElectron.pdf The dynamics of a charged sphere and the electron]. In: American Journal of Physics, Volume 65, Issue 11 (1997), p. 1051.

• (with Josef-Maria Jauch) {{cite book |title=The Theory of Photons and Electrons. The Relativistic Quantum Field Theory of Charged Particles with Spin One-half |url=https://archive.org/details/theoryofphotonse0000jauc |url-access=registration |edition=Second (corrected) |publisher=Springer |location=Berlin |date=1980 |isbn=9780387072951 |oclc=1072438784}} (First edition 1955).
• {{cite book |title=Classical Charged Particles |edition=Third |publisher=World Scientific Press |location=Hackensack, NJ |date=2007 |isbn=978-981-270-004-9 |oclc=938125798}} (First edition 1965; Second edition 1990).
• {{cite book |title=From Paradox to Reality. Our Basic Concepts of the Physical World |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge |date=1987 |isbn=0-521-30749-X |oclc=152510060 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/fromparadoxtorea0000rohr }}

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• {{cite web |title=Fritz Rohrlich |date=October 12, 2012 |last=Goldberg |first=Joshua N. |authorlink=Joshua N. Goldberg |url=http://physics.syr.edu/interviews/media/pdfs/Fritz%20Rohrlich%2010122012.pdf |accessdate=2018-12-05 |publisher=Syracuse University}} A short scientific biography of Rohrlich written by his colleague Joshua Goldberg.
• {{cite book |title=Ehrenpromotion des Herrn Prof. Dr. Fritz Rohrlich, Syracuse University, USA, zum Doktor der Naturwissenschaften |trans-title=Award of an Honorary Doctorate in Natural Science to Prof. Fritz Rohrlich, Syracuse University, USA |language=de |date=1996 |publisher=University of Graz |oclc=889700715 }} Contains Heinrich Mitter's scientific biography of Rohrlich as well as Rohrlich's own address on the occasion of his honorary promotion.

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Category:1921 births

Category:2018 deaths

Category:Scientists from Vienna

Category:American physicists

Category:20th-century American Jews

Category:American people of Austrian-Jewish descent

Category:Jewish emigrants from Austria after the Anschluss to the United States

Category:Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:Fellows of the American Physical Society

Category:21st-century American Jews