A Pantheon of Scientists in Vienna

The Arcades of the Main Building of the University of Vienna are full of memorials to scientists. For comparison, Westminster Abbey in London [1] and the Novodeviche Cemetery in Moscow [2] come to mind. However, the Arcades are not a burial place, so an even closer site in spirit is the Bronx Hall of Fame in New York City [3]. For crystallography, 3 mineralogists deserve special mention in the Vienna site. Here, we augment them with the memorials of 6 other scientists. We recommend visiting the Main Building and the Arcades because they are an architectural landmark and an unofficial science history museum. All photographs (except the Albrecht Schrauf memorial) are by the authors, Istvan and Magdolna Hargittai.

The campuses of the University of Vienna are scattered around the city. Its imposing main building (see above) was built between 1877 and 1884. Its spacious Arcades enclose a large inner courtyard, a popular resting place for students. The walls and columns of the Arcades are decorated with busts and reliefs of over 160 famous scientists, in classical and modern styles.

As we enter the main building, on the left, there is a collage of photographs of 9 former Nobel-Prize-winning professors of the University.

Among the photos of the Nobel-Prize-winning professors at the University of Vienna in 2018 there was a question mark about the next Nobel laureate. The answer was found in October 2022, when it was announced in Stockholm that Professor Anton Zeilinger (b. 1945) was awarded a third of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries in quantum confinement and quantum information science. Zeilinger studied at the University of Vienna, where he obtained his doctorate. He was a professor at the University of Vienna for many years but also taught at the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Innsbruck, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Technical University of Munich. He became Professor Emeritus at the University of Vienna in 2013. In that year, he was elected President of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a position he held until 2022.

The above-quoted tableau shows only the Nobel-Prize-winning professors. If we add Zeilinger and the later Nobel laureates who once studied at this University, among them Richard Zsigmondy, the crystallographer Max Perutz and the literary laureate Elias Canetti, the University of Vienna boasts a total of 16 Nobel laureates. Four of the Nobel-Prize-winning professors emigrated: three, Viktor F. Hess, Otto Loewi and Karl Landsteinter, to the United States; and one, Róbert Bárány, to Sweden. Erwin Schrödinger also spent most of his career in emigration, returning to Austria only shortly before his death.

Many of the Nobel laureates of the 20th century were born in the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary, which existed between 1867 and 1918. Accordingly, many can be 'counted' as Austro-Hungarian Nobel laureates, often simplified as Austrian. In the senseless war of numbers between countries over Nobel laureates, Austria could claim a great many Nobel laureates. Fortunately, they do not, or only rarely, fall into this trap. What is unambiguous, however, is how many Nobel Prize winners have taught at the University of Vienna and how many future Nobel laureates have studied there. These rigorous criteria are met by the 16 Nobel laureates.

Just as characteristic is the number of great-name scientists the University of Vienna can list among those who have ever taught or studied there. Famous people such as Ludwig Boltzmann and Josef Loschmidt taught there and Gregor Mendel, Sigmund Freud, Lise Meitner, Kurt Gödel, Theodor Herzl, Arthur Köstler and the philosopher of science Karl Popper studied there.

So far, over 160 scientists have been commemorated under the Arcades of the main university building. First, we present 3 mineralogists, and then 6 others as a sampler; in both groups, they are presented in the order of increasing birth years.

Mineralogists

Gustav Tschermak (1836‒1927) was a mineralogist best known for classifying meteorites. He was born in the Moravian town of Litovel, then in the Hapsburg Empire, today in the Czech Republic. He earned a teaching degree at the University of Vienna, continued his studies in Germany, in Heidelberg and Tübingen, and became a PhD. He continued his career in Vienna at the University of Vienna and at the Imperial Mineralogical Cabinet. He established the Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen (Mineralogical and Petrographical Reports), published initially in 1871, as Mineralogische Mitteilungen. He held professorial appointments in both mineralogy and petrography at the University of Vienna.

He was recognized for his achievements both at home and internationally by the name tschermakite for a mineral and by memberships of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He also published books; among them, his text Lehrbuch der mineralogie has reached 5 editions, including a recent digital edition. The Historical atlas of crystallography mentions his work on the "relation between morphological and structural directions" ([4], p. 16).

Albrecht Schrauf (1837‒1897) was a mineralogist and crystallographer born in Vienna. He studied at the high school of the Piarist Order and attended the University of Vienna. He majored in chemistry and physics and was especially interested in minerals. He obtained his doctorate at the University of Tübingen. He started publishing early and reported the results of his research on crystal forms. As an associate of the Imperial Mineral Collection, he intensified his crystallographic research. His professorial career at the University of Vienna culminated with his appointment as Professor of Mineralogy. He was elected a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. The Historical atlas of crystallography mentions his work on conical refraction ([4], pp. 11 and 65).

Friedrich Becke (1855‒1951), mineralogist and petrographer, was born in Prague, then in the Hapsburg Empire, today in the Czech Republic. He studied at the University of Vienna and started his career there. He did his doctoral work under Gustav Tschermak's mentorship. Then he had professorial appointments in Czernowitz (today in Ukraine) and Prague before returning to the University of Vienna, where he succeeded Gustav Tschermak as Professor of Mineralogy. He succeeded Tschermak also as the editor of Mineralogische und Petrographische Mitteilungen. Becke's best-known works were in the field of rock-forming minerals and pioneered the use of light-refractive properties in their research. The Historical atlas of crystallography mentions his work related to piezoelectricity ([4], p. 11).

Other scientists: a sampler

Christian Doppler (1803‒1853) was an Austrian mathematician and physicist who recognized the effect named after him, the Doppler effect/Doppler phenomenon: when a sound source and an observer move relative to each other, the frequency of the sound moving towards the observer is perceived as higher by the observer, and perceived as lower when the sound moves away (while the sound source emits a constant frequency sound).

He studied in Salzburg, Linz, and Vienna at the predecessor of today's Vienna University of Technology. He taught mathematics, geometry and natural sciences at various technical schools, including those in Prague and Selmecbánya (today, Banská Štiavnica, in Slovakia). At the peak of his career, he was a Professor of Physics and Director of the Institute of Physics at the predecessor of the Vienna University of Technology. He was the first to discover the Doppler phenomenon for sound, which was also because, at his time, trains were starting to travel at sufficiently high speeds. He later found that his observation of sound could also be applied to light. However, he came to the wrong conclusion because he thought that the light of the stars could tell us whether they were approaching or receding.

Josef Loschmidt (1821‒1895) was a chemist and physicist who also worked on crystal forms. He had early ideas about molecular structure, which he based on the then-emerging kinetic theory of gases. In his book Chemische studien, published in 1861, he illustrated the structure of 300 molecules in two dimensions. The atoms were represented by circles that adhere to each other in the molecule. If we draw straight lines between the centers of the circles, we get an even more modern representation showing the bonds. In 1865, he published his estimates of the size of molecules, which were wrong only in that he thought they were twice the size of those we know today. In these estimates, he relied on the so-called Loschmidt number, which referred to the number of gas molecules in a given volume. As we know today, there are 2.69 x 10¹⁹ molecules in 1 cm³ at standard temperature and pressure, and this is called the Loschmidt constant or Loschmidt number. In 1868, he was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Vienna. He had a friendly relationship with the young Ludwig Boltzmann, who was a lecturer at the same University at the time. Loschmidt's constructive criticisms inspired Boltzmann to develop his statistical approach to entropy.

In 1995, on the centenary of Loschmidt's death, the Austrian postal service issued a 20-schilling stamp. The lower right-hand corner of the stamp reproduced the molecular structure of cinnamic acid as published in Loschmidt's book, and the postmark of the first-day stamp envelope reproduced the molecular structure of acetic acid. In 1989, the Aldrich Chemical Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, reprinted his book Chemische studien.

Ludwig Boltzmann (1844‒1906) was a physicist and philosopher who studied in Vienna under Josef Stefan and received his doctorate in 1866. In 1869, he obtained the right to lecture at the University of Vienna and was appointed professor at the University of Graz the same year. He spent shorter periods with eminent scientists such as Robert Bunsen in Heidelberg, Gustav Kirchhoff, and Hermann von Helmholtz in Berlin. In 1873, Boltzmann returned to the University of Vienna as Professor of Mathematics, and, after a few years, to Graz as Professor of Experimental Physics. It was in Graz that he developed his statistical methods of researching and describing natural science. Graz was also important to him in other ways. He met Henriette von Aigentler, a teacher of mathematics and physics, who wanted to attend the University but was not allowed to do so. Boltzmann supported her appeal, which was eventually successful. They married and had three daughters. Boltzmann later exchanged his post in Graz for a professorship in theoretical physics in Munich, and in 1894, succeeding Josef Stefan, he became Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Vienna.

This was not the end of his wanderings, for in 1900 he became Professor of Physics at the University of Leipzig. He returned to the University of Vienna in 1902 as a last move in his career. Over the years, he had students such as Svante Arrhenius, Walther Nernst, Paul Ehrenfest and Lise Meitner. At the University of Vienna, he had to argue a lot to defend his statistical theory. His main opponent was Ernst Mach, who was appointed Professor of Philosophy and History of Science in 1895. Boltzmann also taught philosophy, and his lectures on natural philosophy were popular. He was also received by the Emperor at the Burg in recognition of his work.

His health deteriorated after the age of 60, and he suffered from bipolar disorder, formerly known as manic depression. In 1906, he was forced to resign from his University post, and a few months later, he took his own life. He was buried in Vienna's central cemetery, his tombstone inscribed with the formula for entropy, S = k_B ln W (where k_B is Boltzmann's constant and W is the statistical weight, the number of microstates of a given macrostate). His wife, ten years his junior, survived him by 32 years.

Karl Landsteiner (1868‒1943) was an Austrian American biomedical scientist best known for his discovery of human blood groups, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930. Born into a Jewish family, his father died when he was 6 years old. He studied at the University of Vienna and published his research while still a student; he was made a doctor in 1891. Between 1891 and 1893, he studied chemistry in Würzburg, Munich and Zurich under distinguished professors.

His years in Vienna followed, and, less known about him, he discovered, together with Erwin Popper, the infectious effect of poliomyelitis and isolated the poliovirus. In Warm Springs, Georgia, USA, a bust of Landsteiner is included on a memorial to scientists who excelled in the fight against polio in children.

A plaque in his honor was placed on the wall of the Institute of Pathology and Anatomy at the University of Vienna in 1990, which sums up his achievements and reads (in our translation into English):

"In this building of the Institute of Pathology and Anatomy, in the year 1900, the intern KARL LANDSTEINER discovered the human BLOOD GROUPS AB0. For this, he received the NOBEL PRIZE in 1930. He also found the hereditary blood factors M, N, P, Hu, He, and the RHESUS FACTOR. He recognized the Poliomyelitis virus as the pathogen of INFANTILE PARALYSIS. The visualization of Spirochaeta pallida in dark field microscopy and the introduction of cattle-heart extracts as reagents in the Wassermann reaction were essential to the understanding of syphilis. Both pandemics, POLIOMYELITIS and SYPHILIS, could be contained due to Landsteiner's findings. The discovery of the AB0 blood groups made BLOOD TRANSFUSION possible, and the discovery of the Rhesus factor led to the application of the IgG ANTIBODIES against the HEMOLYTIC DISEASE of the NEWBORN.
Millions are thankful to Karl Landsteiner for their life and recovery. Institute for Blood Group Serology, Vienna University, 1990."

Landsteiner emigrated to the United States with his family in 1923. For the rest of his life, he worked at the Rockefeller Institute (now Rockefeller University) in New York. In 1927, he discovered the M, N and P blood groups, and his work with Philip Levine led to the start of paternity studies.

Lise Meitner (1878‒1968) was an atomic physicist, one of the most famous scientists of the 20th century, best known for her explanation of nuclear fission. Meitner was interested in mathematics and science from the start, but first qualified as a teacher, which was supposed to give her security. However, she did not give up her ambition to continue her studies. To do this, she first had to pass her secondary school maturation examination, which was not easy because girls could only do this as external pupils. To prepare for this examination, she attended private lessons with other girls from Arthur Szarvassy, who had just earned his doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. Szarvassy showed his students the experimental equipment of the Institute of Physics. Meitner's maturation examination took place in July 1901, under unknown circumstances for her, at the Akademisches Gymnasium. Today, a plaque on the wall of the Gymnasium in Beethoven Square commemorates Meitner's graduation. Of the 14 candidates, only four passed the exam, three of them Szarvassy's pupils and the fourth, one of Ludwig Boltzmann's daughters.

Meitner began her studies at the University of Vienna in October 1901. She first attended the physics lectures for pharmacy students by Professor Franz Exner. The course was very popular, and many students from other faculties also attended it. Exner was associated with Wilhelm Konrad Röntgen and the Curie couple, Pierre and Marie, and taught modern physics. In 1902, Meitner attended Boltzmann's lectures on theoretical physics. Boltzmann was as welcoming to his female students as to his male ones. Meitner completed her studies in the summer of 1905 and began her doctoral research. She chose an experimental topic and worked on the experimental verification of one of Maxwell's formulae. She reported her results in the journal of the Institute of Physics, University of Vienna. In the summer of 1906, she became Dr Lise Meitner. She spent the next year working on radiochemistry and radiophysics under the mentorship of Stefan Meyer, and in 1907 she reported important results of her independent research. However, her future was uncertain, as in Austria she could only hope to find a job as a teacher. With parental support, she made her way to Berlin. The rest of her story is well known.

Her greatest discovery was the interpretation of the experimental observations of Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann on splitting the uranium atom in nuclear fission. However, she could not be present at the experiments themselves because, being of Jewish origin, she had to flee Germany after the Anschluss. She was unjustly omitted from the 1944 Nobel Prize for nuclear fission, awarded to Otto Hahn alone in 1945. However, in even greater honor, alas, posthumously, the element 109, artificially produced in 1982, was named after her in 1997: meitnerium, Mt.

Her three-dimensional portrait, made of glass under the Arcades of the University of Vienna, was created by laser engraving. The glass around the portrait is transparent and the memorial blends in well with its surroundings. The portrait is based on a photograph by Meitner's sister-in-law, the famous photographer Lotte Meitner-Graf (1899‒1973).

Erwin Schrödinger (1887‒1961) was an Austrian physicist who took Irish citizenship when he emigrated to Ireland. He is best known for the Schrödinger equation, which determines the wave function of a system and its variation with time. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Paul Dirac, in 1933. Less well known but significant in the history of science is his book What is life?, in which he attributes the property of carrying heredity to a structure called an aperiodic crystal. He hypothesized that to understand this and the mystery of life, it would be necessary to discover more than the physical laws known up to then. Several future world-famous scientists considered this as a worthy challenge, entered biology, and had a major impact on biological discoveries in the 20th century.

Schrödinger studied and received his doctorate at the University of Vienna, where he got his first job. He continued his research in Germany and was influenced by Arnold Sommerfeld and Wolfgang Pauli. He taught in Jena, Stuttgart and Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), followed by six years at the University of Zurich and then, as Max Planck's successor, at the University of Berlin. In 1933, he left Germany on account of his anti-Nazi views and spent a short time at Oxford. It was there that he learned about his Nobel Prize shared with Paul Dirac. His next venues were Princeton and Edinburgh. In the meantime, he corresponded with Einstein. It was during this time that his famous thought experiment with 'Schrödinger's cat' was born. He returned to Austria and took up a post at the University of Graz. When Germany annexed Austria (Anschluss, 1938), he publicly retracted his earlier anti-Nazi statements, but the National Socialists were not satisfied and dismissed him. He fled to Italy, followed by Oxford and Ghent. A major change came when the mathematician President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, invited him to his country and asked him to help establish the Institute for Advanced Study in Dublin. Schrödinger lived in Dublin from 1938 until his retirement in 1955. He returned to Austria for his last years.

References

[1] Hargittai, I. & Hargittai, M. (2021). Science in London: a guide to memorials. Springer Nature.

[2] Hargittai, I. & Hargittai, M. (2019). Moscow scientific: memorials of a research empire. World Scientific.

[3] Hargittai, I. & Hargittai, M. (2017). New York scientific: a culture of inquiry, knowledge, and learning. Oxford University Press.

[4] Lima de Faria, J. (1990). Editor. Historical atlas of crystallography. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Istvan Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai are at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.