World of Scientific Discovery on Philipp Eduard Anton Lenard
Lenard showed an interest in science at a young age. The son of a very wealthy winemaker, he was educated by some of the most eminent scientists of the time, including Robert Bunsen and Hermann von Helmholtz. After graduating from the University of Heidelberg he worked at several universities before serving as assistant to Heinrich Hertz in 1892, taking over Hertz's laboratory after his death in 1894. He returned to Heidelberg as a professor in 1907 and remained there until 1937, when he left academia to serve as an advisor to Adolf Hitler. Lenard became interested in cathode ray as a teenager after reading a paper by William Crookes. At that time it was impossible to study the rays themselves--they could be easily observed within a Crookes tube, but they were too weak to penetrate the tube's glass. During his studies with Hertz, Lenard designed a modified Crookes tube that included a small "window" made of thin aluminum; the cathode rays could penetrate the aluminum and travel another 3 inches (8 cm) before dispersing. This was after enough distance for scientists to study such principles as how cathode rays were absorbed by different materials and how they ionized air. Lenard's improved Crookes tube also served to support the new idea that atoms were composed of mostly empty space because that would be the only way a cathode ray could pass through a solid substance. As further proof, the device showed that dense materials would inhibit the rays' travel distance more than less dense materials.
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Lenard's efforts turned to the study of photoelectricity. It had been observed that, in certain substances, an electrical current was produced when exposed to light--an observation some credit to Lenard and others credit to Hertz. In 1902 Lenard began a series of experiments on photoelectric metals. Based upon these experiments he theorized that the electrical current was the result of electrons being liberated from the metals' atoms. He showed that the photoelectric effect was produced by only certain wavelengths of light, and that the energy of the electrons emitted remained constant even when the intensity of the light was increased dramatically. For this revelation Lenard was honored with the 1905 Nobel Prize for physics. Though Lenard was undeniably an important physicist, his scientific contributions have been overshadowed by aspects of his personal life. He was very insecure about his reputation and fought bitterly with other scientists, particularly those within his field. In 1934 he published the book Great Men of Science, in which he omitted several prominent scientists--including the discoverer of x-rays, Wilhelm Röntgen, whose work he considered foolish. During the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, when most scientists were in violent opposition to Adolf Hitler's stifling of academia, Lenard gave Hitler his full support; he reviled the works of Albert Einstein and others as Jewish perversions of natural science. He also acted as Hitler's science advisor and promoted dubious theories of physics that supported the concept of a master race. He also asserted that nuclear physics was a "Jewish science," and several historians contend that Germany lost the race to complete the atomic bomb because of Lenard's denouncement.
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