Fritz Reiche Collection

Fritz Reiche (1883-1969) was a German theoretical physicist who immigrated to the U.S. in 1941, as one of the last Jewish physicists to leave Germany under the Nazi government. A student and colleague of Wilhelm C. Röntgen, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Fritz Haber, Rudolf Ladenburg, James Franck, Max Born and Max von Laue, Reiche established a career in a circle of prominent scholars on both sides of the Atlantic. His academic work in the field of quantum theory earned him international recognition as a distinguished scientist. Historically, Fritz Reiche's migrant story as a displaced scholar has often been received in the context of the development of the atomic bomb in the United States, as he brought to the U.S. news of the German advances in the production of fissionable material.

Reiche grew up in Berlin. He studied physics, mathematics and chemistry at the universities of Munich and Berlin and received his Ph.D. degree under Max Planck in 1907. After three years of post-doctoral studies at the University of Breslau (1908-1911), Reiche returned to Berlin where he completed his habilitation thesis in 1913. In 1914 he married Berta Ochs, daughter of Siegfried Ochs, the founder and conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic Choir. The couple had two children. During World War I, Reiche was assistant to Max Planck, 1915-18. At the same time he worked as an instructor at the University of Berlin (1913-1921), and later at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (1919-1921). In 1921 he returned to Breslau as professor of theoretical physics, a position he held until he was dismissed by the Nazi government in 1933. Reiche left Germany for two years as a guest professor at the University of Prague, but returned to Germany in 1935. Until 1941 Reiche held no academic position.

Supported by the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars as well as by Albert Einstein and other colleagues, Reich was eventually able to immigrate with his family to the United States in 1941, where he began to reestablish his career as a scholar at various institutions in the state of New York, including the New School for Social Research (1941), City College (1942-1944), and Union College, Schenectady (1944-1946). He finally obtained a position as adjunct professor at New York University in 1946, where he taught and researched until his retirement at the age of 75. After his retirement in 1958 he continued his academic work at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences until his death in 1969.