History

The University of Zürich was founded in 1833 and its first professor in physics was A. Mousson, a student of Poisson and Cauchy. His main task was to teach physicians. In 1857 R. Clausius was appointed, whose interests were in technical and mathematical physics. He is well known for the introduction of the concept of entropy in thermodynamics. Mousson retired in 1879 and was followed by A. Kleiner. During his time, the physics department acquired its first building at the Rämistrasse, starting the era of more systematic experimental physics. In 1909 A. Einstein was recommended to become the first professor of theoretical physics at the University of Zürich. Einstein was already well known at the time, having received his PhD under A. Kleiner in 1905, his “Annus Mirabilis” when he wrote papers about light quantization, Brownian motion and special relativity. Einstein left the University of Zürich in 1911 for a professorship in Prague. He was followed by P. Debye, who developed the theory of specific heat of solid materials at the institute. M. von Laue succeeded him from 1912-1914. All three were awarded the Nobel Prize.

Between 1914 and 1921, the position in theoretical physics was vacant. Then E. Schrödinger accepted the offer to become the chair in theoretical physics. In 1926 he created the wavefunction formulation of quantum mechanics, one of the milestones of physics in the 20th century. In 1927, W. Heitler and F. London, working with Schrödinger, explained the homeopolar bond by wave mechanics, marking the beginning of modern quantum chemistry. In 1927, Schrödinger left for Berlin to succeed Planck. In Zürich he was replaced by G. Wentzel, who is well known in physics as W in WKB approximation. He was mainly working on applications of quantum mechanics and quantum field theory. G. Wentzel was replaced by W. Heitler in 1949, who worked in the beginning on the theory of the natural width of radiation, using the renormalization methods. In 1958, a new position in theoretical physics was given to A. Thellung, followed by G. Rasche, N. Straumann amd G. Scharf.

Currently the institute has eight professors and permanent staff members working in theoretical physics, together with about twenty-five junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students. Most of the current research is in theoretical particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology.