Friedrich Dessauer (19 July 1881 – 16 February 1963) was a physicist, a philosopher, a socially engaged entrepreneur and a journalist.
Friedrich Dessauer was born in Aschaffenburg, Germany. As a young man he was fascinated by new discoveries in the natural sciences. He was particularly interested in the X-rays discovered by Röntgen and their medical applications. Dessauer studied at the Goethe university in Frankfurt am Main until 1917. From 1924 to 1933 he was a Cristian Democrat party member of the Reichstag, the German Parliament.
He was imprisoned by the Nazis when they came to power for his opposition to Hitler. He was released at request of the Turkish government, who invited him to the University of Istanbul, where he was made chair of the Institute. Here he worked together with Erich Uhlmann to develop medical applications of X-rays in Turkey. He moved to Fribourg University in 1937 to become the chair of experimental physics.
On 16 February 1963 Dessauer died, like many X-ray physicists, from radioactive contamination.
Famous quotes containing the word friedrich:
“Quite generally, the familiar, just because it is familiar, is not cognitively understood. The commonest way in which we deceive either ourselves or others about understanding is by assuming something as familiar, and accepting it on that account; with all its pros and cons, such knowing never gets anywhere, and it knows not why.... The analysis of an idea, as it used to be carried out, was, in fact, nothing else than ridding it of the form in which it had become familiar.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)