Background
His father Franz Serafin was, from 1831 to 1848, a professor for philosophy in Prague and 1848 onwards was on the Board of Education in Vienna and an influential reformer of Austrian university education.
physicist university professor
His father Franz Serafin was, from 1831 to 1848, a professor for philosophy in Prague and 1848 onwards was on the Board of Education in Vienna and an influential reformer of Austrian university education.
University of Vienna.
Exner comes from one of the most important university families of the Austrian-Hungarian empire. The same Exner family includes Adolf Exner, Karl Exner, Sigmund Exner, and Marie von Frisch. Exner was the youngest of five children of parents Franz Serafin Exner and Charlotte Dusensy.
When Exner was appointed 1908 as chancellor of the University of Vienna, he was at the pinnacle of his scientific activities.
Franz Serafin Exner can be described as a physicist with a strong vision, cultivating versatile and highly educated pupils.
Franz Serafin Exner can be described as a physicist with a strong vision, cultivating versatile and highly educated pupils. He was pioneer in numerous areas of modern physics. The early introduction of topics such as radioactivity, spectroscopy, electrochemistry (galvanic element), electricity in the atmosphere, and color theory in Austria can all be owed to Exner"s doing. His most famous pupils included Marian Smoluchowski, a Viennese physicist of Polish descent, who discovered a theory independently of Albert Einstein and Friedrich Hasenöhrl for Brownian motion, and Victor Hess, whose attention for the exciting and extensive topic of atmospheric electricity and associated radioactivity was influenced by Franz Exner, together with Egon Schweidler, a pioneer in the study of the atmospheric electricity, and with Hess" discovery of "cosmic radiation" receiving the Nobel prize later, and the later Nobel prize winner Erwin Schroedinger, who began in 1911 as Exner"s assistant, with "studies on the kinetics of dielectrics, melting point, pyroand piezoelectricity" and finally Stefan Meyer. In the 1920s and 1930s most physics chairs were occupied by pupils of Exner: Josef Thuma, Brno, later full professor in Prague. Anton Lampa, Prague; Hans Benndorf, Graz. Marian Smoluchowski, Czernowitz, Krakau. Stefan Meyer, Vienna. Egon Schweidler, Innsbruck, Vienna. Eduard Haschek, extra full professor Vienna. Friedrich Hasenöhrl, Vienna. Arthur Szarvassi, Heinrich Mache, Vienna. Victor Conrad, Brünn, later United States of America. Felix Maria von Exner-Ewarten, Vienna. Friedrich von Lerch, Innsbruck. Karl Przibram, Vienna. Felix Ehrenhaft, Vienna. Erwin Lohr, Brünn; Wilhelm Schmidt, Vienna. Franz Aigner, Vienna. Victor Francis Hess, Graz, Innsbruck, New New York Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Kohlrausch, Graz. Ludwig Flamm, Vienna. Erwin Schrödinger, Jena, Leipzig, Zurich, Berlin, Graz, Dublin, Vienna. And Hans Thirring, Vienna.
German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Austrian Academy of Sciences.
