Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850-1918): Inventor of the oscilloscope

Задание I. Следующие слова Вы должны выучить наизусть. Это поможет понять вам текст.

1. Rectification – выпрямление;

2. contribution – вклад;

3. share – разделять;

4. humble – скромный, застенчивый;

5. alien – иностранец;

6. embarrassment – смущение, нерешительность;

7. defer – удерживать, останавливать;

8. indigestible – трудноперевариваемый;

9. cum laude – прославлять;

10. elude – избегать, уклонятся;

11. implication – вовлечение, впутывание;

12. refute – опровергать;

13. inherit – наследовать;

14. subject – подвергать;

15. hover – колебаться;

16. dowry – приданое;

17. it was at the time… that… -именно в то время…

Задание II. Прочитайте тест, найдите в нем следующую информацию. Расскажите ее по-английски.

1. За что Браун получил Нобелевскую премию?

2. Что вы узнали о семье Брауна, кто были его родители, жена?

3. Как Браун вывел эффект выпрямления?

4. Расскажите историю создания Telefunken.

Задание III. Будьте готовы перевести любые предложения в тексте, если преподаватель попросит вас об этом.

TEXT

Ferdinand Braun invented the oscilloscope and discovered the rectification effect, two truly major contributions to the art of electronics. But when he shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909 with Marconi it was for his work on radio telegraphy. Of all the early radio pioneers he probably understood the science of radio better than any.

From humble beginnings, this gentle and modest man developed a brilliant academic career and was one of the great scientists of his day. In 1914 he traveled from his native Germany to the USA to defend his patents in court. World War I prevented his return and he became an enemy alien, but his age and reputation saved him from any embarrassment. On the 20th April, 1918 he died aged 67, in an enemy but friendly country. Another seven months would have seen the war at an end and the old man able to return home. Braun was born at Fulda, about 60 miles north-east of Frankfurt, on the 6th June 1850. His father, Johann Conrad, was a civil servant and a protestant; his mother, Franziska Gohring, was a catholic. They agreed to raise their four sons, of whom Ferdinand was the fourth, as Protestants and their two daughters as Catholics. Though they were not well off, by hard work and careful housekeeping they managed to educate their boys and provide dowries for their girls.

While at Fulda's high school, Ferdinand came to love crystallography. At 15 he wrote a textbook on the subject, complete with 200 hand-drawn illustrations, but it was never published. He also published a scientific article (on water) in a teachers' journal. He, and a friend who had done likewise, were reprimanded for "unauthorized publication". Not deterred, Braun published neither which was translated into Russian. At 16 he published his third; truly a boy wonder.

On entering the University of Marburg as a 17 year old, he studied physics, chemistry and mathematics. The latter was not to his liking and he always found mental arithmetic difficult. Years later, colleagues joked that the only time he got his calculations right was when two errors cancelled out. One (invented) tale had him multiplying 25 by 2 during a lecture, rounding the 25 to 30 for simplicity to give 60, then commenting that 60 was too high so the answer was probably nearer 50. A popular article about him, years after his death, was headlined "Wizard Hated Mathematics". It was not true. He was just bad at mental arithmetic.

Still, he disliked the maths lectures at Marburg. Of one lecturer he wrote: "His lectures are completely indigestible. All he does is to dictate notes that only a stenographer could take down." Not surprisingly Braun soon switched to Berlin, the major science university in Germany. There he made a good impression and was one of only four students allowed access to one private laboratory.

In December 1869, Professor G.H. Quincke offered him a laboratory assistantship with a salary sufficient to make him partially independent of his father, who was trying to steer him into a secure career as a qualified school teacher. For now the salary on offer was enough to overcome his father's reserve about a career in science.

In 1872, Braun submitted for his doctoral examination, for which his exa-miner, Hermann Helmholtz, passed him cum laude. "On the whole it went quite well," he wrote to his parents, though he was shocked at the cost of printing his thesis.

Soon afterwards, Quincke moved to Wurzburg to take the chair of physics and Braun went as his assistant: His low salary still did not make him financially secure so, pleasing his father, he qualified as a school teacher and earned extra income from writing. His gift for sarcasm got him published under pseudonyms in major magazines he always aimed high.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14