Career
Born in Brittnau, Switzerland, he earned his bachelor"s degree in 1897 and his Doctor of Philosophy in 1902 from the Eidgenossisches Polytechnikum in Zurich. Kunz arrived at the University of Illinois in 1909 as a theoretical physicists. He taught most of the graduate courses and supervised half of the Ph.
Ds up to 1929.
Larazus notes that “He was clearly the intellectual leader of the department.” One of his students was East. Frances Seiler who became the first woman to earn a Doctor of Philosophy in physics at Illinois for her thesis on the color-sensitivity of photoelectric cells. Kunz made significant contributions to construction of photoelectric cells improving on the methods introduced by Elster and Geitel. Kunz’s photoelectric cells were many times more sensitive that what was available commercially and therefore able to detect faint star light.
Kunz’s cells would be used at half a dozen observatories all across the nation including Yerkes Observatory, Lick Observatory, and Washburn Observatory.
Kunz also accompanied Stebbins and four solar eclipse expeditions to measure the total light of the solar corona with the photoelectric photometer. The collaboration between Stebbins and Kunz continued until Kunz’s death in 1938.
Kunz also collaborated with electrical engineering professor Joseph Tykociński-Tykociner to use a photoelectric cell to photograph sound and reproduce it electronically. When Tykociner demonstrates the first sound-on-film motion picture recordings in 1921 in Urbana, the projector has a Kunz cell at its heart.
Jakob Kunz was the son of Jakob and Anna Marie Weber Kunz.
Stebbins remembers Kunz as “the proverbial simplicity of a true scientist He was liberal in politics and religions, and was always an enthusiastic worker for social justice.”.