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Paul Ehrenfest

Paul Ehrenfest

1880 CE–1933 CE · Vienna

Paul Ehrenfest (Austrian German: [ˈpaʊl ˈeːrənfɛst]; 18 January 1880 – 25 September 1933) was an Austrian theoretical physicist who made major contributions to statistical mechanics and its relation to quantum mechanics, including the theory of phase transition and the Ehrenfest theorem. He befriended Albert Einstein on a visit to Prague in 1912 and became a professor in Leiden, where he frequently hosted Einstein. Suffering from depression, in 1933 Ehrenfest killed his disabled son, Wassik, and then himself.

Adapted from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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ViennaוינהAustria

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About Vienna

Major Central European Jewish center pre-Holocaust. Home of Isaac of Vienna (Or Zarua), R. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch's training, R. Akiva Eger's son-in-law Chatam Sofer.

In Vienna at the same time

Ludwig Boltzmann, Sigmund Freud, Lise Meitner, Erwin Schrödinger, Wolfgang Pauli

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Influenced byLudwig BoltzmannPaul EhrenfestShapedEnrico Fermi