Rudolf Ladenburg
Rudolf Walter Ladenburg (1882–1952) was a German physicist. He was born on June 6, 1882, in Kiel, in the Kingdom of Prussia. His father was the chemist Albert Ladenburg and his mother was Margarete Pringsheim. He was a non-practicing Jew and an atheist.
Ladenburg studied at Heidelberg, Breslau, and Munich, and earned his PhD in 1906 under Wilhelm Röntgen at Munich. His doctoral work was on the internal friction of viscous liquids and how it depends on pressure. In 1911 he married Else Uhthoff, and they had three children: Margarethe, Kurt, and Eva.
He began his career as a Privatdozent in Breslau in 1909 and later became an außerordentlicher Professor. In 1924 he moved to the University of Berlin and joined the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry. In 1930 he went to the United States to become the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Professor of Physics at Princeton University.
When many German scientists left the country after 1933, Ladenburg coordinated the placement of exiled physicists in jobs in the United States. He retired from Princeton in 1950 and died on April 6, 1952, in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 69. Albert Einstein gave the eulogy at his funeral.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:43 (CET).