In Memoriam Max von Laue - iucr.org.pdf

PART V In Memoriam kty Developmentai a Physicist AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Max van Laue * ‘/ 1.’ (l@LljO) i “. It would seem that my essentially bookish nature was noticed by perceptive adults at an early age. In any case, when I was nine or ten years old, my grandfather, Theodor Zerrenner, who loved me dearly, made me a Christmas present of the comprehensive ten volume edition of Brehm’s Tierleben. I remember looking at the beautiful illustrations many times and even today I retain a certain general knowledge of the principal divisions of the animal kingdom. This preoccupation, however, came at a time when a boy does not think of his future profession and I never felt any inclination to study biology. Later on my dear Mother may have mentioned Law as a profession, but that too did not last long for other things began to occupy my at- tention. It happened in the Tertia of the Wilhelms Gymnasium? in Berlin-we had moved recently to this town (1891) because my father had been transferred there from Posen-that I heard at school, I cannot remember in what context, of the deposition of copper from copper sate solution by an electric current. The impression which this first contact with physics made on me was overwhelming. For se