Herbert Fröhlich Explained

Herbert Fröhlich
Birth Date:	1905 12, df=yes
Birth Place:	Rexingen, Württemberg, German Empire
Death Place:	Liverpool, England, UK
Nationality:	British
Fields:	Physicist
Alma Mater:	Ludwig-Maximilians University
Doctoral Advisor:	Arnold Sommerfeld
Signature:	Herbert Fröhlich sig.jpg
Footnotes:	He is the brother of the mathematician Albrecht Fröhlich.

Herbert Fröhlich (9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991) FRS^[1] was a German-born British physicist.^{[2] [3]}

Career

In 1927, Fröhlich entered Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich to study physics, and received his doctorate under Arnold Sommerfeld in 1930. His first position was as Privatdozent at the University of Freiburg. Due to rising anti-Semitism and the Deutsche Physik movement under Adolf Hitler, and at the invitation of Yakov Frenkel, Fröhlich went to the Soviet Union, in 1933, to work at the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute in Leningrad. During the Great Purge following the murder of Sergei Kirov, he fled to England in 1935. Except for a short visit to the Netherlands and a brief internment during World War II, he worked in Nevill Francis Mott's^[1] department, at the University of Bristol, until 1948, rising to the position of Reader. At the invitation of James Chadwick, he took the Chair for Theoretical Physics at the University of Liverpool.^{[1] [4]}

In 1950, Bell Telephone Laboratories offered Fröhlich their endowed professorial position at Princeton University. However, at Liverpool he had a purely research post which was attractive to him. He was then newly married to an American, Fanchon Angst, who was studying linguistic philosophy at Somerville College, Oxford under P. F. Strawson, and who did not want to return to the United States at that time.^{[5] [6] [7] [8] [9]}

From 1973, he was Professor of Solid State Physics at the University of Salford, however, all the while maintaining an office at the University of Liverpool, where he gained emeritus status in 1976 and remained there until his death. During 1981, he was a visiting professor at Purdue University.^{[10] [11]} He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 and in 1964.^[12]

Fröhlich, who pursued theoretical research notably in the fields of superconductivity and bioelectrodynamics, proposed a theory of coherent excitations in biological systems known as Fröhlich coherence.^{[13] [14] [15] [16] [17]} A system that attains this coherent state is known as a Fröhlich condensate, similar to room-temperature non-equilibrium Bose–Einstein condensation of quasiparticles.^{[18] [19] [20] [21] [22]}

Honours and awards

Fröhlich was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1951.^[1] In 1972, he was awarded the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft Max-Planck Medal and in 1981 an Honorary Doctorate from Purdue University.^[23]

Books by Fröhlich

• Herbert Fröhlich Elektronentheorie der Metalle. (Struktur und Eigenschaften der Materie in Eigendarstellung, Bd.18). (Springer, 1936, 1969)
• Herbert Fröhlich Elektronentheorie der Metalle (Ann Arbor: Edwards Brothers, First US edition, in German, 1943)
• Herbert Fröhlich Theory of Dielectrics: Dielectric Constant and Dielectric Loss (Clarendon Press, 1949, 1958)
• Herbert Fröhlich and F. Kremer Coherent Excitations in Biological Systems (Springer-Verlag, 1983)
• Herbert Fröhlich, editor Biological Coherence and Response to External Stimuli (Springer, 1988)

Personal life

Fröhlich was the son of Fanny Frida (née Schwarz) and Jakob Julius Fröhlich, members of an old-established Jewish family in their home town of Rexingen, and the brother of Albrecht Fröhlich, a mathematician who was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976.^{[24] [25]}

External links

• University of Liverpool: Fröhlich, Herbert FRS (1905–1991), Physicist
• Did Herbert Fröhlich predict or postdict the isotope effect in superconductors?
• Artist statement by Fanchon Fröhlich with:
  • A portrait of Herbert Fröhlich

Notes and References

1. Mott . N. . Nevill Francis Mott. 10.1098/rsbm.1992.0008 . Herbert Fröhlich 9 December 1905 – 23 January 1991 . . 38 . 145–162 . 1992 . 123600343 .
2. Terence W. Barrett and Herbert A. Pohl Energy Transfer Dynamics: Studies and Essays in Honor of Herbert Frohlich on His Eightieth Birthday (Springer-Verlag, 1987)
3. GJ Hyland and Peter Rowlands (editors) Herbert Frohlich FRS: A Physicist Ahead of his Time. (University of Liverpool, 2006, 2nd edition 2008.)
4. http://theor.jinr.ru/~kuzemsky/hfrobio.html Biography of Herbert Frohlich (1905–1991)
5. Web site: Fanchon Frohlich. 2020. Fanchon Frohlich Artist Philosopher. 6 April 2020.
6. Web site: Fanchon Fröhlich obituary. Hyland. Gerard. 8 September 2016. The Guardian. 6 April 2020.
7. Book: Hyland, G.J.. Herbert Fröhlich: A Physicist Ahead of His Time. Springer. 2015. Cham, Switzerland. 120–121.
8. Web site: Audrey F Aungst in the 1930 United States Federal Census. 2 April 1930. Ancestry.com. 6 April 2020.
9. News: Obituary for JOSEPH AUNCST [sic] (Aged 74)]. 28 June 1944. The Courier (Waterloo, Iowa). 6 April 2020.
10. http://www.physics.purdue.edu/alumni/hondegree/frohlich.html Fröhlich
11. http://sca-arch.liv.ac.uk/ead/search?operation=full&rsid=783&firstrec=1&numreq=20&highlight=1&recid=gb141unistaffe-g-d56 Fröhlich, Herbert FRS (1905–1991), Physicist
12. https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=10566 Nobel Prize Nominations
13. Fröhlich . H. . March 1968 . Bose condensation of strongly excited longitudinal electric modes . Physics Letters A . 26 . 9 . 402–403 . 10.1016/0375-9601(68)90242-9 . 1968PhLA...26..402F .
14. Fröhlich . H. . September 1968 . Long-Range Coherence and Energy Storage in Biological Systems . International Journal of Quantum Chemistry . 2 . 5 . 641–649 . 10.1002/qua.560020505 . 1968IJQC....2..641F .
15. Fröhlich . H. . July 1977 . Long-range coherence in biological systems . La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento . 7 . 3 . 399–418 . 10.1007/BF02747279. 1977NCimR...7..399F . 121598507 .
16. Book: . Fröhlich . Herbert . Kremer . Friedrich . 1983 . Coherent Excitations in Biological Systems . Proceedings in Life Sciences . . 10.1007/978-3-642-69186-7. 978-3-642-69188-1 . 27896466 .
17. Book: . Fröhlich . Herbert . 1988 . Biological Coherence and Response to External Stimuli . Springer-Verlag . 10.1007/978-3-642-73309-3. 978-3-642-73311-6 .
18. Moskalenko . S. A. . Pokatilov . E. P . Miglei . M. F. . Kiselyova . E. S. . October 1979 . Bose condensation of phonons in biological systems . Quantum Chemistry . 16 . 4 . 745–752 . 10.1002/qua.560160405.
19. Book: Wu . T. M. . Ho . Mae-Wan . Popp . Fritz-Albert . Warnke . Ulrich . October 1994 . Bioelectrodynamics and Biocommunication . Chapter 16: Fröhlich's Theory of Coherent Excitation — A Retrospective . World Scientific . 387–409 . https://ayuba.fr/pdf/wu1994.pdf . 10.1142/9789814503822_0016.
20. Web site: Catherine Meyers . 13 October 2015 . Quantum Coherent-like State Observed in a Biological Protein for the First Time . American Institute of Physics .
21. Katona . Gergely . Lundholm . Ida V. . Rodilla . Helena . Wahlgren . Weixiao Y . Duelli . Annette . Bourenkov . Gleb . Vukusic . Josip . Friedman . Ran . Stake . Jan . Schneider . Thomas . 1 . October 2015 . Terahertz radiation induces non-thermal structural changes associated with Fröhlich condensation in a protein crystal . Structural Dynamics . 2 . 5 . 054702 . 10.1063/1.4931825. 26798828 . 4711649 . free .
22. Zhang . Zhedong . Agarwal . Girish S. . Scully . Marlan O. . 19 April 2019 . Quantum Fluctuations in the Fröhlich Condensate of Molecular Vibrations Driven Far From Equilibrium . Physical Review Letters . 122 . 15 . 158101 . 1810.07883 . 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.158101. 31050540 . 2019PhRvL.122o8101Z . 53322370 .
23. http://www.physics.purdue.edu/alumni/hondegree/frohlich.html Honorary Doctorate Recipient – Purdue University
24. Book: Hyland, G.J.. Herbert Fröhlich: A Physicist Ahead of His Time. Springer. 2015. Cham, Switzerland. 5.
25. Web site: Archives of UK's 11 important scientists' work to be preserved for posterity . 23 January 2015 . 23 January 2015 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150123024755/http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/archive/2006/7/20/archives200706.html . dead .