Career
Upon Habilitation, Becker became a Privatdozent at the University of Berlin. In 1926, he became ordinarius professor at Technische Hochschule Berlin (Today: Technische Universität Berlin.) and head of the new physics department there.
In 1935 Sommerfeld, the theoretician who helped to usher in quantum mechanics and educated a new generation of physicists to carry on with the revolution, reached the age for which he could achieve emeritus status. The Munich Faculty drew up a candidate list to replace him as ordinarius professor of theoretical physics and head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics. There were three names on the list: Werner Heisenberg, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932, Peter Debye, who would receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1936, and Becker - all former students of Sommerfeld. The Munich Faculty was firmly behind these candidates. However, academic supporters of Deutsche Physik and elements in the Reichserziehungsministerium (Acronym: REM, and translation: Reich Education Ministry.) had their own list of candidates and the battle commenced.
Adolf Hitler had come to power in Germany on 30 January 1933 and Max Born had taken leave as director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Georg-August University of Göttingen on 1 July of that year and emigrated to England. In 1934, Fritz Sauter, while only a Privatdozent, was brought in to Göttingen as acting director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) and lecturer on theoretical physics; Born was officially retired under the Nuremberg laws on 31 December 1935. Sauter, who had been an assistant to Becker at the Technische Hochschule Berlin, continued as the acting director of the ITP until 1936, when Becker was appointed director of the ITP and ordinarius professor of theoretical physics, after the REM eliminated Becker’s position at Berlin and reassigned him to Göttingen. Becker remained there as director until his death in 1955.
In 1954, Becker became president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.
Becker’s students included Eugene Wigner, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963, Wolfgang Paul and Hans Georg Dehmelt, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989, and Herbert Kroemer, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2000.
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