Ernst Emil Alexander Back

Ernst Emil Alexander Back was a German physicist, born in Freiburg. He attended school in Strasbourg until 1900, and from 1902 until 1906 studied law in Strasbourg, Munich, and Berlin. He then worked in the legal profession in Alsace-Lorraine until 1909, afterwards taking leave to study physics in Tübingen. He retired from the legal profession in 1912, and earned his Ph.D. in 1913. His thesis, titled Zur Prestonschen Regel, was on the subject of what would later be called the Paschen-Back effect, and was named after Back and Friedrich Paschen.