Harteck, Paul

Harteck, Teachers] Harteck, Paul My Outstanding Teachers, October 1983, PHP 8 8. 

Harteck did important work in quantum-and radiochemistry and also played a leading role in Germany s atomic energy program during World War II. See P. F. Dahl, Heavy Water and the Wartime Race for Nuclear Energy (Bristol, 1999). After the war, when Harteck settled in the United States, he focused on atmospheric and interstellar chemistry. See A. Farkas, Paul Harteck The triumphant decade 1925-1934, Am-bix 36 (1989) 91-102. 

Ernest Rutherford, Marcus Oliphant, and Paul Harteck discover tritium. 

Haber had assembled in his Institute a brilliant group of scientists whose research interest centered around the then frontiers of physical chemistry photochemistry, spectroscopy, the role of atoms and radicals in chemical reactions and colloid chemistry. The department heads included R. Ladenburg, H. Freundlich, M. Polanyi, K.-F. Bonhoeffer, and later Paul Harteck. 

In the meantime I found out that Paul Harteck was working next door in Lord Rutherford s Cavendish Laboratory on the recovery of heavy water from water containing 0.3% deuterium supplied by the Ohio Chemical Company. The concentration was done by electrolysis, and we joined forces on this project. 

Toward the end of 1933 Professor Haber came to visit Lord Rutherford. Paul Harteck brought him over to our laboratory and we had a brief reunion. But by now Haber was not the imposing Geheimrat anymore. He vias a sick, broken man who had lost his position, his home, his fatherland and most of his income. He died a few months later in Basel. 

We used heavy water donated by Paul Harteck and demonstrated the occurrence of the thermal and catalytic reaction H2 + D2 = 2HD, the exchange reaction D2 + H2O = HD + HDD, and the partial separation of hydrogen-deuterium mixtures by diffusion through palladium ( ). ... 

Tritium was discovered by British scientists Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937), Mark Laurence Oliphant (1901-2000) and Paul Harteck (1902-1985) in 1934. It forms in the upper atmosphere under the action of protons and neutrons on atoms nuclei. For instance, at a coUlsion with nitrogen we have... 

During the same period Paul Harteck in Hamburg was building a Clusius separation tube in December he tested it by successfully separating isotopes of the heavy gas xenon. He traveled to Munich at Christmastime to discuss design improvements with Clusius, who was professor of physical chemistry at the university there. Auer, the thorium specialists, purveyors of gas mantles and radioactive toothpaste, delivered the first ton of pure uranium oxide processed from Joachimsthal ores to the War Office in January 1940. German uranium research was thriving. 

Norsk Hydro was a prime German objective and there was heavy fighting around Rjukan, which held out until May 3, the last town in southern Norway to surrender. Then a management under duress reported to Paul Harteck that its heavy-water facility, the Vemork High Concentration Plant, could be expanded to increase production of the ideal neutron moderator to as much as l.S tons per year. 

Fig. 2.14. Left to Right Karl Friedrich Bonhoeffer, Ladislaus Farkas (seated), Paul Harteck, Hans...

The same year it provided its final equipment grant to the Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation also provided fellowships for Paul Harteck to pursue postdoctoral studies in Cambridge with Ernest Rutherford and for Hans Kopfermann... 

Bonhoeffer, Harteck, Wasserstoff] Bonhoeffer, Karl Friedrich/Paul Harteck Experi-mente uber Para- und Orthowasserstoff, Sitzungsberichte der PreuBischen Aka-demie der Wissenschaften, physikal.-mathem. Kl. (1929), p. 103-108. 

PHP Paul Harteck Papers, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. RAC Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. 

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