Carl Benedicks

Carl Benedicks
Carl Benedicks around 1910
Born	27 May 1875 Stockholm
Died	16 July 1958
Resting place	Adolf Fredrik Church[1]
Nationality	Swedish
Scientific career
Institutions	Stockholm University

Carl Axel Fredrik Benedicks (27 May 1875 – 16 July 1958) was a Swedish physicist whose work included geology, mineralogy, chemistry, physics, astronomy and mathematics.

Biography

Carl Benedicks was born 27 May 1875 in Stockholm, Sweden to Edward Otto Benedicks and Sofia Elisabet Tholander. He married Cecilia af Geijerstam on 6 October 1899.^[1]

Benedicks was a professor at Stockholm's technical university,^[2] Director of the Institute of Metallography,^[3] and was the first to study the yttrium silicate thalenite.^[4] In 1926 Benedicks argued to the Nobel Physics Committee that Jean Baptiste Perrin should receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work, over 15 years prior, on Brownian motion, a debate which led to Perrin's eventual nomination and award.^[5] Benedicks was awarded a Carnegie Gold medal for his work on the cooling power of liquids, quenching velocities, and the constituents of troostite and austenite.^[6]

Benedicks was critical of the Copenhagen interpretation put forward by Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, saying he thought they had resigned themselves to never observing the effects of individual atoms, and that their arguments were no more than that of any pessimist.^[7]

References

1. "Carl AF Benedicks" (in Swedish). Swedish Biographical Dictionary (part of The Svedberg.). Retrieved 13 February 2014.
2. Samuel Leslie Hoyt (1979). Men of metals: an exciting career among the pathfinders of modern metallurgy. American Society for Metals. ISBN 087170059X. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
3. Max Jammer (2008). Concepts of Simultaneity: From Antiquity to Einstein and Beyond. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0801889530. Retrieved 13 February 2014 – via Google Books.
4. J.W.Adams, Fred A. Hilderbrand, R.G.Havens (1962). "Thalenite from Teller County, Colorado". Geological Survey Research. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
5. Mauro Dardo (2004). Nobel Laureates and Twentieth-Century Physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 114–116. ISBN 0521540089. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
6. "Iron and Steel Institute". Nature. 78 (2012): 67–68. May 21, 1908. Bibcode:1908Natur..78...67.. doi:10.1038/078067a0. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
7. John L. Heilbron (1985). "The earliest missionaries of the Copenhagen spirit". Revue d'histoire des sciences. 38: 221. Retrieved 13 February 2014.