Person: Jahn, Hermann Arthur
Hermann Arthur Jahn was an English scientist who worked on quantum mechanics and group theory.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Hermann Jahn was born in Colchester but spent his youth in Lincoln.
- One such relates to Marion May Jahn and we record it here.
- After leaving the City School in 1925, Jahn entered University College, London where he read chemistry.
- Jahn received his doctorate for his thesis Rotation und Schwingung des Methanmoleküls (The rotation and oscillation of the methane molecule).
- This was the Jahn-Teller effect dating from ...
- This work was immediately recognised as being very important, and Jahn's name along with Teller's became enshrined in the literature.
- Similarly, the second of these papers, with Jahn as the only author, uses irreducible representations of symmetric groups in the proof of the results.
- During the Second World War, Jahn worked at the Royal Aircraft Establishment where the work was primarily on aircraft engine problems.
- Jahn, who was an expert on vibrations in molecules, now worked on vibrational problems in aircraft.
- Jahn was employed at the Royal Aircraft Establishment from 1941 to 1946.
- She met Jahn when he was studying for his doctorate in Leipzig.
- Jahn then spent the two years 1946-48 working in the Department of Mathematical Physics in the University of Birmingham.
- In 1947 Jahn considered working for the Atomic Energy Research Establishment situated near Harwell.
- But Jahn was a realist.
- Peierls was head of the Department of Mathematical Physics in the University of Birmingham where Jahn was working at the time he went to be interviewed by Fuchs.
- Jahn did not take a job at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment but, in 1948, was appointed to the first Chair in Applied Mathematics at University College, Southampton.
- At Southampton one of Jahn's first research students was James Philip Elliott (1929-2008).
- He then went on to study for a Ph.D. at Southampton advised by Jahn.
- Jahn and Elliott explored the application of Racah's tensor operator techniques to nuclear structure and applied group theoretic techniques to the understanding of atomic nuclei.
Born 31 May 1907, Colchester, England. Died 24 October 1979, Southampton, England.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Origin England
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
