Walter Franz

Walter Franz (8 April 1911 in Munich – 16 February 1992 in Münster) was a theoretical physicist who independently discovered the Franz–Keldysh effect.

Franz was a student of Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich. He was granted his Ph.D. in 1934.^[1][2] In the preface to the book Optik, Sommerfeld cited him for “the most recent and particularly lucid treatment” of the vectorial generalization of Hauygens’ principle.^[3]

With Adolf Kratzer, another student of Sommerfeld, Franz co-authored the book Transzendente Funktionen. An academic descendent of Franz, Ludwig Tewordt, is cited as having received his Ph.D. at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, in 1953.^[4] The article in which Franz independently published the Franz-Keldysh effect was published in 1958.

Selected bibliography

• Adolf Kratzer and Walter Franz Transzendente Funktionen (Akadem. Verl.-Ges. Geest & Portig, 1960)
• W. Franz Die Streuung von Strahlung am magnetischen Elektron, Annalen der Physik Vol. 425, Issue 8, 689-707 (1938)
• Walter Franz, Einfluß eines elektrischen Feldes auf eine optische Absorptionskante, Z. Naturforschung 13a 484-489 (1958)

Notes

1. Walter Franz – Mathematics Genealogy Project. The title of his dissertation was Comptoneffekt am gebundenen Elektron.
2. Institut für Theoretische Physik I - Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg 1934: München, Germany. This reference also cites his birth and death years.
3. Arnold Sommerfeld, translated from the first German edition by Otto Laporte and Peter A. Moldauer Optics - Lectures on Theoretical Physics Volume IV (Academic Press, 1964), p. vi
4. Walter Franz – Mathematics Genealogy Project.