Walter Franz

For the Minnesota politician, see Walter Franz (politician).

Walter Franz (8 April 1911, in Munich – 16 February 1992, in Münster) was a German theoretical physicist who independently discovered the Franz–Keldysh effect.

Franz was a student of Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich. He was granted his Ph.D. in 1934.[1][2] In the preface to the book Optik, Sommerfeld cited him for "the most recent and particularly lucid treatment" of the vectorial generalization of Huygens’ principle.[3]

With Adolf Kratzer, another student of Sommerfeld, Franz co-authored the book Transzendente Funktionen. An academic descendant of Franz, Ludwig Tewordt, is cited as having received his Ph.D. at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, in 1953.[4] The article in which Franz independently published the Franz–Keldysh effect was published in 1958.

  1. ^ Walter Franz – Mathematics Genealogy Project. The title of his dissertation was Comptoneffekt am gebundenen Elektron.
  2. ^ Institut für Theoretische Physik I - Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg 1934: München, Germany. This reference also cites his birth and death years.
  3. ^ Arnold Sommerfeld, translated from the first German edition by Otto Laporte and Peter A. Moldauer Optics - Lectures on Theoretical Physics Volume IV (Academic Press, 1964), p. vi
  4. ^ Walter Franz – Mathematics Genealogy Project.