ABSTRACT
In author's student days there were two chairs of physics in Gottingen, an experimental and a theoretical one, occupied by Riecke and Voigt. Riecke had died; after an interregnum, when author's friend Rausch von Traubenberg ran the department, Robert Pohl, from Rubens's school in Berlin, was appointed, not as full professor but 'Extraordinarius'. Voigt retired before reaching his age limit; he wanted to finish his monumental book on crystal physics and be rid of all departmental duties. Towards the end of the war Voigt died, and Debye was offered a chair at Zurich in Switzerland. It was his chair the author was offered: to be an 'Ordentlicher Professor' and head of the whole laboratory, previously consisting of two independent and well equipped parts. One of these parts had been given over to Pohl and would not be the author direct responsibility, but the other part, Voigt's, was to be run by the author.
