Faculty of Physics Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Fakultät für Physik (Karlsruher Institut für Technologie)

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Physics has been represented by important names in Karlsruhe since the then Polytechnic University was founded in 1825. Wilhelm Eisenlohr set up the first physical institute in the engineering school. Technical physics was first taught in 1864. At the latest by Ferdinand Braun, physics in Karlsruhe received a strong electrotechnical accent in the last third of the 19th century. Braun's successor was Heinrich Hertz, who succeeded in proving electromagnetic waves experimentally in 1887 and thus created the basis for today's modern communication technologies. Hertz followed Otto Lehmann, who was able to detect liquid crystals with the help of his self-developed crystallization microscope.

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Even after Lehmann, a world-class physicist taught and researched in Karlsruhe: Wolfgang Gaede. With his inventions he made the processes of modern high vacuum technology possible. His time at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, which began in 1919, ended abruptly when the National Socialists came to power in 1933: he was dismissed for advocating democratic ideas. In 1931, the electrical engineering department, in which physics had been integrated since 1895, received a theoretical chair for the first time, which essentially dealt with physical phenomena.

In the time of National Socialism, however, physics in Karlsruhe almost degenerated into insignificance. It was not until Christian Gerthsen, who worked at the Technical University from 1948 until his death in 1956, that experimental physics recorded a significant upswing and was able to build on the pre-war years. Gerthsen's textbook on experimental physics is still considered a standard work today.

Physics finally established itself around 1960, when, in addition to the chair at the Physics Institute, other chairs for applied physics, experimental nuclear physics, theoretical nuclear physics and mathematical physics, structure of matter, geophysics and meteorology were established. In 1969 and 1970 the structure of today's KIT physics faculty was finally created.

With the merger of the University of Karlsruhe (TH) and the Karlsruhe Research Center to form the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in 2009, new opportunities for collaboration opened up for physics, which led to a broadening of the range of research topics and an expansion of the range of courses, especially in the Master’s area and the offered topics for doctoral theses.