Max von Laue

Max Theodor Felix von Laue was born on 9 October 1879 in Germany and trained as a physicist at a moment when X-rays were still mysterious. In 1914 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that crystals diffract X-rays, a breakthrough that opened crystallography as a field and eventually let scientists map the structure of DNA and proteins. His work ranged across optics, quantum theory, superconductivity, and relativity, but he spent four decades in administrative roles steering German research through upheaval. A vocal objector to Nazism, he became instrumental in rebuilding Germ…