Background
Victor Francis Hess was born on June 24, 1883 in Schloss Waldstein, Austria-Hungary (now Styria, Austria). He was the son of Vinzenz Hess, forester to the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein, and Serafine Grossbauer-Waldstatt.
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Victor Francis Hess was born on June 24, 1883 in Schloss Waldstein, Austria-Hungary (now Styria, Austria). He was the son of Vinzenz Hess, forester to the Prince of Oettingen-Wallerstein, and Serafine Grossbauer-Waldstatt.
Hess studied at the gymnasium in Graz, graduating in 1901, and was trained in physics and mathematics at the University of Graz, receiving the Ph. D. in 1906. After more advanced study in Graz, Hess became a physics instructor at the Vienna Veterinary College.
In 1910 Hess was appointed chief assistant to the director of the Institute for Radium Research at the University of Vienna, and a year later he was named associate professor.
Around the turn of the century many scientists were puzzled by background radiation which was often detected by their instruments in sealed containers and which spoiled their experiments. Research by Theodor Wulf and A. W. Gockel before 1910 suggested possible extraterrestrial sources rather than solar or terrestrial ones. Hess took up this problem in 1911, combining a knowledge of scientific instrumentation with the daring of the experimenter. He made ten adventuresome balloon ascents, including five at night, collecting data with instruments in hermetically sealed chambers. He concluded that after an initial decrease in the level of radiation to a height of 1000 meters the emissions increased at greater elevations. For example, the radiation at 5, 000 meters was several times that of sea level. These experiments indicated that the same levels of radiation penetrated the atmosphere at all hours of the day and night. Even during a solar eclipse, radiation remained constant. Hess deduced that the radiation had a cosmic and not a solar or terrestrial origin. To gather conclusive proof he began extended research by collecting data at a mountaintop station near Innsbruck, which he personally equipped with instruments.
World War I halted experimentation. Hess served as head of an X-ray department of a military hospital in Vienna from 1915 to the end of the war. In 1920 the University of Graz appointed Hess associate professor. He took a leave of absence in 1921 to become chief physicist and director of research for the United States Radium Corporation and to act as a consultant for the Bureau of Mines, Department of the Interior.
Hess returned to Graz in 1923 as full professor and became dean of the faculty in 1929. At this time research on the origin and dimension of extraterrestrial radiation was being intensified throughout the scientific world. In 1925 Robert A. Millikan named such emissions "cosmic rays. " Hess, a leader in this field, accepted the post as head of radiation research at the University of Innsbruck. He founded several new data collection stations in the Alps.
In the interwar period Hess wrote The Electrical Conductivity of the Atmosphere and Its Causes (1928), Ionization Balance of the Atmosphere (1933), and a number of important papers. These works confirmed his earlier research and established him as a leading world physicist. In addition, he verified that sunspot activity had no effect on cosmic radiation and claimed proof for variation in radiation based on differing latitudes. In 1936 Hess shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Carl D. Anderson. Hess's work laid the groundwork for Anderson's discovery of the positive electron, or positron.
Although a Nobel laureate, Hess did not escape the scrutiny of Nazi officials after the annexation of Austria to Germany in 1938. In 1938 he was dismissed from the post at Graz because his wife was Jewish. Hess and his wife fled to Switzerland after a warning from a Gestapo officer that they were about to be sent to a detention camp. In 1938, Fordham University offered a full professorship to Hess and he accepted. He became an American citizen in 1944.
During World War II Hess continued radiation research and taught meteorology to army students at Fordham. After the development of the atomic bomb, he became more interested in the biological impact of nuclear energy (he himself lost a thumb because of an accident while handling radium). In 1946 he and a colleague, Paul Luger, conducted the first tests for radioactive fallout in the United States.
Four years later Hess joined an Air Force radiation research program. He warned that nuclear and biological scientists had insufficient data on the long-range effects of radiation, and he urged an end to testing of nuclear weapons until more information was available. Hess, who spoke English with a slight German accent, enjoyed teaching at Fordham. Retiring with emeritus status from Fordham in 1956, he continued limited research activities.
He died in Mount Vernon, New York.
Hess is best remembered as the Nobel Prize laureate for Physics in 1936 for his discovery of cosmic rays--high-energy radiation originating in outer space. His research led to the discovery of several new fundamental particles--including the positron, discovered in 1932--as well as advances in astrophysics and cosmology. His awards include Lieben Prize (1919), Abbe Memorial Prize, Abbe Medal of the Carl Zeiss Institute, Jena (1932), Nobel Prize in Physics (1936), Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (1959). A lunar crater is named after Hess.
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Hess was a a devout Catholic.
Hess lost a thumb because of an accident while handling radium.
On September 6, 1920, Hess married Mary Bertha Warner Breisky, a native of Hungary. They had no children. In 1955 his wife died. A few months later he married Elizabeth M. Hoenke; they had no children.
