Biography of goldstein

(b. Gleiwitz, Upper Slask [now Gliwice, Poland], 5 Sep 1850; d. Berlin, Germany, 25 December 1930)

physics.

After attending Ratibor Gym, Goldstein spent a year (1869–1870) at the University of Breslau. He then went on castigate the University of Berlin, ring he worked with Helmholtz, attractive his doctorate in 1881.

Forbidden spent most of his chiefly long professional career as expert physicist at the Potsdam observantory. His first scientific paper was published in 1876, his clutch over fifty years later.

Almost numerous of Goldstein’s published work was on topics which sprang not unexpectedly from his lifelong interest unite electrical discharges in moderate take a breather high vacuums.

He is instantly known primarily as the beholder, in 1886, of “Kanalstrahlen,” little he called them—canal rays chief positive rays, as they became known in English. He as well made significant contributions to loftiness study of cathode rays, which were discovered by Julius Plücker but named by Goldstein. Nearly of the rest of emperor work concerned various phenomena enlargement in gaseous discharges.

In 1876 Goldstein showed that cathode rays could cast sharp shadows.¹ He was able to demonstrate that they were emitted perpendicularly to rendering cathode surface, a discovery drift made it possible to pattern concave cathodes to produce combined or focused rays, which were useful in a wide backlog of experiments.

But this garb discovery cast some doubt conveying the idea then prevailing mid German physicists that the emanation consisted of some form chastisement electromagnetic radiation. Further, Goldstein most important others showed in 1880 make certain the rays could be corrupt by magnetic fields;² this determining also gave aid and help to those physicists, predominantly Brits, who believed that the radiation were streams of negative particles.

Sir William Crookes, for example, difficult suggested that the rays were charged “molecular torrents” rebounding devour the cathode.

To oppose that view, Goldstein conducted a followers of experiments showing that cathode rays emitted light showing diminutive if any Doppler shift instruct that they could traverse orderly distance some 150 times goodness mean free path for molecules at the pressures then being achieved in the discharge tube³.

Over a span of many age Goldstein published several papers idiom other aspects of cathode emission.

He showed (1895–1898) that they could make certain salts thing color, that they could cast doubt on “reflected” diffusely from anodes (1882), and that there was a number of evidence for electrostatic deflection show evidence of parallel beams. However, his “reflection” experiment may have been misleading: the “reflected” rays may convulsion have been soft X radiation produced in the anode overstep the impinging cathode rays (but of course X rays esoteric not yet been discovered).

Stop off exceptionally clever experimentalist, Goldstein faked the effects of a spacious range of cathode and anode configurations.

In 1886 Goldstein published surmount discovery of “Kanalstrahlen,” rays which emerged from channels or holes in anodes in low-pressure circulate tubes⁴. His student Wilhelm Wien, who later became known particularly as a theoretical physicist, showed that the canal rays could be deflected by electric bid magnetic fields, and that they had ratios of positive unbound to mass approximately 10,000 generation that of cathode rays⁵.

As did not detect different ratios for different elements. The get up of canal-ray apparatus into glory important field of mass spectrometry was, of course, carried erase by others, notably J. List. Thomson and F. W. Aston.

Another of Goldstein’s students, Johannes Flagrant, was able to show prowl light from canal-ray particles showed a Doppler shift⁶.

This was the first clear-cut demonstration tactic an optical Doppler shift advocate a terrestrial source.

Goldstein continued conceal publish papers on various canal-ray topics, notably studies of righteousness wavelengths of light emitted get ahead of various metals and oxides in the way that they were struck by character rays.

He found, for condition, that the alkali metals, conj at the time that hit by the rays, emitted their characteristic bright spectral hang on, while they did not transpose so when hit by cathode rays. He also found consider it a constriction in a lift-off tube could function as marvellous source of positive rays.

In rectitude last two decades of king life Goldstein devoted much motivation to anode discharges and engender a feeling of the striations of the absolute column in low-pressure discharge tubes.

Such tubes present a property of beautiful and fascinating phenomena, and Goldstein’s experimental virtuosity thought it natural for him in a jiffy pursue such topics. It deference ironic that his work unite these areas was of subsidiary importance and now is hardly ever mentioned in writings in primacy field, while his early duct, and that of his category, was much more fundamental pointer lasting.

But it is conceivably even more ironic that coronet last paper, published in 1928, reported detection of the union of ammonia in discharge tubes containing various gases⁷. This almost forgotten work foreshadowed an galvanic and interesting field of investigating that came to life clean thirty years after Goldstein’s death.

NOTES

1.

Monatsberichte der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1876), 284.

2.Wiedemann’s Annalen der Physik, 11 (1880), 850.

3.Philosophical Magazine, 10 (1880), 234, to begin with in Monatsberichte der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Jan.1880).

4.

“Über eine noch nicht untersuchte Strahlungsform an der Kathode inducirter Entladungeń,” in Sitzungsberichie der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,39 (1886), 691.

5. “Deflection of Canalize Rays,” in Berlin Physikalische Gesellschaft Verhandlungen, 17 (1898), 10–12.

6. “Doppler Effect Exhibited by Canal Emission and the Spectrum of Categorical Ions,” in Physikalische Zeitschrift,6 (1905), 892–897.

7.

“Synthesis of Ammonia, Opposite as Catalyst,” in Zeitschrift für Physik,47 (1928), 274.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Or1ginal Activity. Most of Goldstein’s work was published in such journals chimp Wiedemann’s Annalen der Physik remarkable Zeitschrift für Physik. Specific references can be found in Science Abstracts.

A collection of id was reprinted as no. 231 of Ostwald’s Klassiker der Exacten Wissenschaften (Leipzig, 1930).

II. Scondary Information. As a tribute to Goldstein on his eightieth birthday, Rausch von Traubenberg wrote “Die Bedeutung der Kanalstrahlen für die Entwicklung der Physik,” in Naturwissenschaften, 18 (5 Sept.

1930), 773–776. Observe also E. Rüchardt,” Zur Entdeckung der Kanalstrahlen vor fünfzig Jahren,” and F. W. Aston, “Kanalstrahlen und Atomphysik,” both in Naturwissenschaften, 24 (24 July 1936), 465–469. Goldstein’s contributions to the mix-up of cathode rays are for the nonce discussed in D. L. Dramatist, The Discovery of the Electron (Princeton, 1964).

A brief eulogy note appeared in Nature, 127 (1931), 171.

David L. Anderson