Rudolf Ladenburg

Rudolf Walter Ladenburg (6 June 1882 – 6 April 1952) was a German physicist. When the wave of German emigration began in 1933, he was the principal coordinator for job placement of exiled physicists in the United States. Albert Einstein gave the eulogy at Rudolf's funeral.

Rudolf Walter Ladenburg was born on 6 June 1882 in Kiel, Germany, the son of Jewish chemist Albert Ladenburg and Margarete Pringsheim. He was a non-practicing Jew and an atheist.

From 1900 to 1906, Ladenburg studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Breslau, and Munich. In 1906, he received his Ph.D. under Wilhelm Röntgen at Munich.

In 1911, Ladenburg married Else Uhthoff, with whom he had three children; Margarethe, Kurt, and Eva.

After completing his habilitation, Ladenburg became a Privatdozent at Breslau, and in 1909 an ausserordentlicher Professor. In 1924, he took an appointment at the University of Berlin, along with becoming a scientific member of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society in Berlin.

Ladenburg went to the United States in 1930, when he was appointed to the Cyrus Fogg Brackett Chair of Physics at Princeton University. When the emigration wave from Germany began in April 1933, he was the principal coordinator for the employment of exiled physicists in the United States. He retired from Princeton in 1950.

Ladenburg died on 6 April 1952 in Princeton, New Jersey, at the age of 69.