Max Theodor Felix von Laue

Max Theodor Felix von Laue (1879-1960), German physicist and Nobel Prize winner. Laue received the 1914 Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery of X-ray crystallography (the study of patterns produced by the diffraction of X rays by crystal substances), which provided the means to determine the arrangement of atoms in some substances.

Born in Pfaffendorf, Laue started studying physics at the University of Strasbourg (which at the time was a German university; the city of Strasbourg is now part of France) in 1899, then continued his studies at the Universities of Göttingen, Munich, and Berlin, earning a Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Berlin in 1903. He was an assistant to his mentor, physicist Max Planck, at the Institute for Physics in Berlin, and was affiliated with several German universities as well as the University of Zürich in Switzerland. In 1917 Laue became deputy director to American physicist Albert Einstein at the Institute for Physics. Later Laue added the duties of professor at the University of Berlin, where he taught until 1943, when he resigned in protest of the Nazi regime. In 1945, during World War II (1939-1945), Laue was taken prisoner by the Allies and was sent to England with other German scientists. He returned to Germany in 1946 and became head of the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen. In 1951, at age 71, he became director of the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, where he stayed until his retirement in 1958.

Optics and the wave theory of light interested Laue. After the 1895 discovery of X rays by the German physicist Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, scientists debated whether X rays were particles or short electromagnetic waves. Physicists studied visible light by diffraction using a finely ruled grating. The spacings in a diffraction grating had to correspond with the wavelength of the light studied, and no artificial grating was fine enough for the estimated wavelength of X rays, assuming they were electromagnetic waves.

At the University of Munich in 1912 Laue predicted that X rays could be diffracted by a crystal acting as a natural diffraction grating. Faculty members Walter Friedrich and Paul Knipping undertook the investigation, using copper sulfate as the crystal, with immediate success. As Laue had predicted, dark spots on a photographic plate behind the crystal revealed not only the primary X ray the researchers had directed at the crystal, but also the diffracted rays around it. Experiments with various crystals produced patterns, now known as Laue patterns, from which crystal structure could be interpreted.

Einstein called Laue's work one of the most beautiful discoveries in physics. It led to the development of X-ray spectroscopy, determination of X-ray wavelength, and the exploration of atomic structures of chemical elements. X-ray structural analysis became part of physics and chemistry, with practical applications in industry.

Laue later studied forces between atoms and worked on the thermodynamics of superconductivity. His books on the history of physics and Einstein's theory of relativity are widely read.