Rudolf Tomaschek

Education

From 1913 to 1918, Tomaschek studied at the Deutschen Universität Prag. He earned his doctorate in the early 1920s under Philipp Lenard, at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, and then became Lenard’s assistant. He completed his Habilitation under Lenard in 1924.

Career

Beginning with 1921, he conducted several aether drift experiments, repetitions of the Michelson-Morley experiment and the Trouton–Noble experiment, whose negative outcome further supported Albert Einstein's special relativity – although Tomaschek was a critic of that theory.

In November 1926, Tomaschek went to the Technische Hochschule München (today, the Technische Universität München) and then to the Philipps-Universität Marburg, where he was appointed ausserordentlicher Professor (extraordinarius professor) for experimental physics, in late 1927. From 1934, Tomaschek was the director of the physics department at the Technische Hochschule Dresden (today, the Technische Universität Dresden). From 1939 to 1945, Tomaschek was an ordentlicher Professor (ordinarius professor) and director of the physics department at the Technische Hochschule München.

Tomaschek was a supporter of deutsche Physik. The deutsche Physik movement was anti-Semitic and anti-theoretical physics. As applied in the university environment, political factors took priority over the historically applied concept of scholarly ability, even though its two most prominent supporters were the Nobel Laureates in Physics Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, the concept and movement took on more favor and more fervor. Supporters of deutsche Physik launched vicious attacks against leading theoretical physicists, including Arnold Sommerfeld and Werner Heisenberg.

It was in the summer of 1940 that Finkelnburg became an acting director of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Dozentenbund (NSDDB, National Socialist German University Lecturers League) at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt (today, the Technische Universität Darmstadt). As such, he organized the Münchner Religionsgespräche, which took place on November 15, 1940. The event was an offensive against the deutsche Physik movement. Finkelnburg invited five representatives to make arguments for theoretical physics and academic decisions based on ability, rather than politics: Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Otto Scherzer, Georg Joos, Otto Heckmann, and Hans Kopfermann. Alfons Bühl, a supporter of deutsche Physik, invited Harald Volkmann, Bruno Thüring, Wilhelm Müller, Rudolf Tomaschek, and Ludwig Wesch. The discussion was led by Gustav Borer, with Herbert Stuart and Johannes Malsch as observers. While the technical outcome of the event may have been thin, it was a political victory against deutsche Physik and signaled the decline of the influence of the movement within the German Reich.

In 1945, the Allied occupation authority in Germany suspended Tomaschek from his positions at the Technische Hochschule München; he was succeeded by Georg Joos in September 1946.

From 1948 to 1954, Tomaschek was employed at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) Research Centre, Kirklington Hall, near Newark, England; the AIOC became British Petrolim in 1954. From 1954, he went to Breitbrunn-Chiemsee, in Bavaria, where he continued his research activities; there he was President of the Permanenten Gezeitenkommission (Permanent Tidal Commission).

Books by Tomaschek

Literature by Tomaschek