ABSTRACT
Gustav Ludwig Hertz was born in Hamburg, Germany, on July 22, 1887. His parents were Auguste Hertz, nee Arning, and the lawyer Gustav Hertz, brother of the famous expert on electromagnetic waves Heinrich Hertz. He seems to have chosen a career as a scientist early in life. When Hertz returned to the University of Berlin after World War I, he resumed work in the study of electron bombardments and the quantized energy exchanges that accompany James Frank, and began to experiment with X-ray spectroscopy as well. Hertz and James Franck received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 for their spectroscopic experiments on mercury vapor when bombarded with electrons. Hertz refused to take a Nazi loyalty oath in 1934 and resigned his academic post to accept a position as chief physicist for Siemens Corporation in Berlin. He was a member of most scientific academies in the Eastern Bloc, as well as the Gottingen Academy of Sciences in the West.
