Friedrich Hund

Who was Friedrich Hund?

Friedrich Hermann Hund was a German physicist from Karlsruhe known for his work on atoms and molecules.

Hund worked at the Universities of Rostock, Leipzig, Jena, Frankfurt am Main, and Göttingen.

Hund worked with such prestigious physicists as Schrödinger, Dirac, Heisenberg, Max Born, and Walter Bothe. At that time, he was Born's assistant, working with quantum interpretation of band spectra of diatomic molecules.

After his studies of mathematics, physics, and geography in Marburg and Göttingen, he worked as a private lecturer for theoretical physics in Göttingen, professor in Rostock, Leipzig, Jena, Frankfurt/Main and from 1957 again in Göttingen. Additionally, he stayed in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr and lectured on the atom at Harvard University. He published more than 250 papers and essays in total. Hund made pivotal contributions to quantum theory - especially concerning the structure of the atom and of molecular spectra.

In fact, Robert S. Mulliken, who was awarded the 1966 Nobel Prize in chemistry for molecular orbital theory, always proclaimed the great influence Hund's work had on his own and that he would have gladly shared the Nobel prize with Hund.