Herbert Fröhlich

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Herbert Fröhlich (9 December 1905 - 23 January 1991) was a German-born British physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Society.

H. Fröhlich was born in Rexingen, Germany, the son of Fanny Frida (née Schwarz) and Jakob Julius Fröhlich, members of an old-established Jewish family. He grew up in Munich, where he received his Ph.D. (1930) as a pupil of Arnold Sommerfeld.

Forced to give up his first teaching and research positions (Freiburg, Germany; Leningrad St. Petersburg, Russia) the young professor came to England in 1935, working mainly at the University of Bristol. From 1948 until 1973 he held the first Chair of Theoretical Physics at the University of Liverpool. After a long and rather creative period in the state of Professor Emeritus, he died in 1991 in Liverpool, where he was honoured in 2006 (see external links).

Besides numerous scientific papers, H. Fröhlich wrote 'Elektronentheorie der Metalle' (1936) and 'Theory of Dielectrics' (1949), which became important textbooks in Theoretical Physics and provided fundamental contributions to Applied Sciences and technical developments (e.g. semiconductors, superconductivity). 1951 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society, 1972 H. Fröhlich received the German Max-Planck-Medal.