Abstract
THE issue of the Physikalische Zeitschrift for June 1 contains an account of the life and work of the late Prof.F. Exner of Vienna from the pen of his pupil and colleague Prof. H. Benndorf. Franz Exner was the youngest of the five children of F. Exner, professor of philosophy at Prague, who was called to co-operate with Count Thun in the reform of Austrian education in 1848. He was born in Vienna in 1849 and lost both his parents at an early age. He was a pupil at the gymnasium at Vienna from 1860 until 1867, when he entered the University under Stefan, who although director of the physical institute had no assistants and only a miserable supply of instruments. After two years at Vienna, he spent a year under Kiindt at Zurich, where his brother was lecturer on Roman law. On his return to Vienna he graduated as doctor in 1871. After acting for two years as assistant to Kiindt at Strasbourg, he became lecturer and assistant to von Lang at Vienna and in 1879 professor extraordinary. In 1891, on the death of Loschmidt, he became ordinary professor, and in 1907 Rector of the University. The new physical institute he designed was opened in 1913. He retired at the age limit in 1920 and died in Vienna on Nov. 15, 1926, aged seventy-seven years. During his tenure of the professorship the University of Vienna produced a large number of physicists, who now occupy most of the chairs of physics at Austrian universities and the lectureships at high schools. Of his own researches, those on atmospheric electricity are probably best known; but he also did valuable work on spectroscopy, on colour vision, and on the voltaic cell.
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[Obituaries]. Nature 120, 306 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/120306b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/120306b0