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Fritz Houtermans was born on 22 January, 1903 in Austria, is a Prussian-born physicist and communist (1903–1966). Discover Fritz Houtermans's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Learn How rich is he in this year and how he spends money? Also learn how he earned most of networth at the age of 120 years old?

Popular As N/A
Occupation N/A
Age 120 years old
Zodiac Sign Aquarius
Born 22 January 1903
Birthday 22 January
Birthplace N/A
Date of death
Died Place N/A
Nationality Austria

We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 22 January. He is a member of famous teacher with the age 120 years old group.

Fritz Houtermans Height, Weight & Measurements

At 120 years old, Fritz Houtermans height not available right now. We will update Fritz Houtermans's Height, weight, Body Measurements, Eye Color, Hair Color, Shoe & Dress size soon as possible.

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Dating & Relationship status

He is currently single. He is not dating anyone. We don't have much information about He's past relationship and any previous engaged. According to our Database, He has no children.

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Fritz Houtermans Net Worth

His net worth has been growing significantly in 2023-2024. So, how much is Fritz Houtermans worth at the age of 120 years old? Fritz Houtermans’s income source is mostly from being a successful teacher. He is from Austria. We have estimated Fritz Houtermans's net worth, money, salary, income, and assets.

Net Worth in 2024 $1 Million - $5 Million
Salary in 2024 Under Review
Net Worth in 2023 Pending
Salary in 2023 Under Review
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Source of Income teacher

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Timeline

1903

Friedrich Georg "Fritz" Houtermans (January 22, 1903 – March 1, 1966) was a Dutch-Austrian-German atomic and nuclear physicist and Communist born in Zoppot (now Sopot) near Danzig (now Gdańsk), West Prussia to a Dutch father, who was a wealthy banker.

He was brought up in Vienna, where he was educated, and moved to Göttingen when he was 18 to study.

It was in Göttingen where he obtained his Ph.D. under James Franck.

1920

Houtermans was a Communist; he had been a member of the German Communist Party since the 1920s.

1921

Houtermans began his studies at the University of Göttingen in 1921, and he received his doctorate under James Franck in 1927, the same year Robert Oppenheimer received his doctorate under Max Born.

1925

Hertz and Franck were Nobel Prize laureates; they shared the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics.

While at Göttingen, Houtermans met Enrico Fermi, George Gamow, Werner Heisenberg, Wolfgang Pauli, and Victor Frederick Weisskopf.

1927

Charlotte Riefenstahl, who received her doctorate in physics at the University of Göttingen in 1927, the same year as Houtermans and Robert Oppenheimer, was courted by both men.

1928

Houtermans and Gamow did pioneering work on quantum tunneling in 1928.

1929

Houtermans, in 1929, with Robert d'Escourt Atkinson, made the first calculation of stellar thermonuclear reactions.

1930

In 1930, she left her teaching position at Vassar College and went back to Germany.

During a physics conference at the Black Sea resort of Batumi, Riefenstahl and Houtermans were married in August 1930, in Tbilisi, with Wolfgang Pauli and Rudolf Peierls as witnesses to the ceremony.

1932

He completed his Habilitation under Gustav Hertz at the Technical University of Berlin, in 1932.

From 1932 to 1933, Houtermans taught at the Technical University of Berlin and was an assistant to Hertz.

While there, he met Patrick Blackett, Max von Laue, and Leó Szilárd.

1933

After the election of Adolf Hitler in 1933, Charlotte Houtermans insisted that they leave Germany.

They went to Great Britain, near Cambridge, where he worked for the EMI (Electrical and Musical Instruments, Ltd.) Television Laboratory.

1935

In 1935 Houtermans emigrated to the Soviet Union, as the result of a proposal by Alexander Weissberg, who had emigrated to there in 1931.

Houtermans took an appointment at the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute and worked there for two years with the Russian physicist Valentin P. Fomin.

1937

In the Great Purge, Houtermans was arrested by the NKVD in December 1937.

He was tortured and confessed to being a Trotskyist plotter and German spy, out of fear from threats against Charlotte.

However, Charlotte had already escaped from the Soviet Union to Denmark, after which she went to England and finally the USA.

1939

Their pioneering calculations were the impetus for Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker and Hans Bethe, in 1939, to put forth the correct theory of stellar thermonuclear energy generation.

After the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, Houtermans was turned over to the Gestapo in May 1940 and imprisoned in Berlin.

1940

Through efforts of Max von Laue, Houtermans was released in August 1940, whereupon he became employed Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik, a private laboratory of Manfred Baron von Ardenne, in Lichterfelde, a suburb of Berlin.

1944

In 1944, Houtermans took a position as a nuclear physicist at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt.

While imprisoned in the Soviet Union, a cellmate of Houtermans was the Kiev University historian Konstantin Shteppa.

They would later write a book together, Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession, under the pseudonyms of Beck and Godin to protect their many friends and colleagues back in the USSR.

At the Forschunsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne, Houtermans showed that transuranic isotopes, such as neptunium and plutonium, could be used as fissionable fuels in substitution for uranium.

In an act of espionage against his country, Houtermans sent a telegram from Switzerland to Eugene Wigner at the Met Lab warning the USA's Manhattan Project of German work on fission: "Hurry up. We are on the track."

During Houtermans's employment at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR), he got himself into serious trouble as a result of his habit of being a chain-smoker and suffering great distress if he did not have a supply of tobacco.

On official PTR stationery, he wrote to a Dresden cigarette manufacturer to obtain a kilogram of Macedonian tobacco, claiming that he could extract heavy water from the tobacco, and thus that it was "kriegswichtig", i.e., important for the war effort.

When he had smoked the tobacco, he again wrote for more, however, the letter fell into the hands of an official at the PTR, who had him fired.

Werner Heisenberg and Carl Weizsäcker came to the rescue of Houtermans and arranged an interview for him with Walter Gerlach, the plenipotentiary (Bevollmächtiger) for German nuclear research under the Reich Research Council.

1945

As a result, Houtermans moved to Göttingen in 1945, where Hans Kopferman and Richard Becker got him positions at the Institut für Theoretische Physik and II.

Physikalisches Institut der Universität Göttingen.

1952

From 1952, Houtermans took a position as ordinarius professor of physics at the University of Bern.

During his tenure there, he founded Berner Schule, whose thrust was the application of radioactivity to astrophysics, cosmochemistry, and geosciences.

Houtermans was married four times.

Charlotte was his first and third wife in four marriages.