Walter
Bothe was born at Oranienburg, Germany,
on 8th January, 1891. He studied physics under Max
Planck at the University of Berlin (1908-12) and obtained his
doctorate in 1914.
Bothe
fought in the First World War during the First
World War and was taken prisoner by the Russian
Army on the Eastern Front. He was
not released until 1920.
He
taught at the Physikalisch-Technische Reinsanstalt and in 1929 he
showed that the cosmic rays bombarding the Earth are composed not
of photons but of massive particles.
Bothe
was appointed professor of physics at the University of Giessen
(1930-32), the University of Heidelberg (1932-34) and director of
the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research.
Walter
Bothe, who
won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954, died in 1959.
