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Max Born Facts & Worksheets

Max Born was a German physicist and mathematician who played an important role in the development of quantum mechanics.

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Max Born was a German physicist and mathematician who played an important role in the development of quantum mechanics. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 with Walther Bothe for his research in quantum mechanics, particularly in the statistical interpretation of the wave function.

See the fact file below for more information on the Max Born or alternatively, you can download our 24-page Max Born worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

EARLY LIFE

  • Max Born was born on December 11, 1882, in Breslau (now Wrocław), Poland.
  • His father, Gustav Born, was a professor of embryology at the University of Breslau, and his mother, Margarethe née Kauffmann, came from a family of textile industrialists.
  • Born was raised in an upper-middle-class Jewish family.
  • Max’s younger sister, Käthe, was born in 1884.
  • Max’s mother died when he was four years old.
  • His father appointed governesses to look after Max and his sister over the next four years until his second marriage to Bertha Lipstein in 1890.
  • With a professor as a father, Max grew up in an academically rich and cultured setting.

EDUCATION

  • Max was tutored at home before attending the König Wilhelm Gymnasium in Breslau, where he studied a wide range of subjects.
  • After his time there, he continued his studies in mathematics and physics at universities in Breslau, Heidelberg, Zürich, and Göttingen.
  • At the University of Göttingen, he studied mathematics under three renowned mathematicians, namely Felix Klein, David Hilbert, and Hermann Minkowski.
  • He mainly studied mathematics, but he also studied physics under Woldemar Voigt and astronomy under Karl Schwarzschild.
  • After he attended a seminar on elasticity, which was conducted by Klein and professors Carl Runge and Ludwig Prandtl, he wrote a dissertation on the stability of elastic wires and tapes in 1906.
  • In 1907, he was awarded the Prize of the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Göttingen for his work.
  • A year later, he graduated at Göttingen on the basis of this work.

BRIEF SERVICE IN THE ARMY

  • Upon his graduation, Born was obliged to serve in the military and was drafted in the German army.
  • His service was cut short after suffering an asthma attack in January 1907, which caused him to be discharged prematurely.
  • Thereafter, he studied physics for six months at the Cavendish Laboratory under J. J. Thomson, George Searle, and Joseph Larmor in Cambridge University.
  • Born returned to Germany and got inducted again to the Army.
  • He was again medically discharged after six weeks of service.

EARLY CAREER IN PHYSICS

  • He then returned to Breslau, aiming to finish his post-doctoral degree in physics.
  • In Breslau, for the academic year 1908-09, Born worked under the supervision of Otto Lummer and Ernst Pringsheim, and he extensively studied Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
  • Recognized for his work on the relativistic electron, Born was invited back to Göttingen as an assistant to mathematical physicist Hermann Minkowski.
  • Born returned in the winter of 1909.
  • In 1912, Born made his first trip to the United States, where he was invited to lecture on relativity at the University of Chicago.
  • In 1915, Born was offered a professorship at the University of Berlin, where he assisted physicist Max Planck.
  • However, World War I began, and he was drafted into the German army, where he contributed by working on artillery sound ranging.

AFTER THE WAR

  • While in the army, Born’s five-year investigation of crystals was published in his first book, Dynamik der Kristallgitter (Dynamics of Crystal Lattices).
  • Between 1919 and 1921, he was was appointed to a full professorship at the University of Frankfurt am Main.
  • In 1921, Born became professor of theoretical physics in Göttingen, where he worked for twelve years.

SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENTS

  • Born made much of his scientific contributions during his time in Göttingen.
  • He became the director of the physics department at Göttingen in 1921.
  • He collaborated with his students on quantum theoretical studies.
  • His students later became well-known in the field of physics.
  • Among them was Wolfgang Pauli, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Pascual Jordan, Enrico Fermi, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer.
  • In 1925 and 1926, together with Heisenberg and Jordan, he published their investigations on the principles of quantum mechanics.
  • Shortly thereafter, he published his own studies on the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics on the atomic level.
  • In 1954, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this work.
  • He shared the Nobel Prize with Walther Bothe.
  • Born worked at Göttingen until April 1933, when all Jews were dismissed from their academic posts in Germany and forced to emigrate.
  • Born was offered a temporary lectureship in Cambridge, where he taught for three years.
  • During the winter of 1935, Born worked with Sir C.V. Raman and his students at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.
  • In 1936, he became Tait Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where he worked until his retirement in 1953.
  • He became a British citizen in 1939.

PERSONAL LIFE & DEATH

  • In 1912, Born met Hedwig Ehrenberg, whom he married a year later.
  • Born and Ehrenberg had three children.
  • After his retirement, Born and his wife moved to Bad Pyrmont, a small spa town near Göttingen.
  • At 87 years old, Max Born died in Göttingen on January 5, 1970.

Max Born Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Max Born across 24 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Max Born worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Max Born who was a German physicist and mathematician who played an important role in the development of quantum mechanics. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1954 with Walther Bothe for his research in quantum mechanics, particularly in the statistical interpretation of the wave function.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Max Born Facts
  • Who Was Born?
  • False Assumptions
  • Course Of Events
  • All About Physics
  • Work Checklist
  • Agree or Disagree?
  • Born’s Pupils
  • Nobel Winners
  • Max Born Recap
  • Born With Purpose

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