James Franck

James Franck earned his doctorate in 1906 at Frederick William University in Berlin, where he rose to professor while conducting the Franck-Hertz experiment - decisive proof of Bohr's atomic model - and shared the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics with Gustav Hertz. He survived a gas attack in World War I, led the physics division at Göttingen through the 1920s working alongside Max Born, and championed women physicists including Lise Meitner and Hertha Sponer. When the Nazis seized power in 1933 he resigned in protest, helped Jewish colleagues escape, and left Germany for Copenhagen and then the United States. During the Manhattan Project he directed the chemistry division of the Metallurgical Laboratory and chaired the committee that produced the Franck Report, urging the government not to use atomic bombs on Japanese cities without demonstration or warning.