From 16th to 18th Sept, 2025, I attended and gave a talk at Optofluidix 2025, thanks to the invitation of Prof. Frank Cichos and his team, Department of Physics, University of Leipzig.
This department is steeped in history, and this post is to give you a pictorial glimpse of some people who worked there.
Werner Heisenberg, aged 25, became a Professor at the University of Leipzig, Germany. It was an illustrious department then, had professors such as Peter Debye, Gustav Hertz (of the Franck-Hertz experiment fame), Friedrich Hund and many others. Felix Bloch was a student of Heisenberg in Leipzig.
As the AIP archives describe, “Only 25 years old in October 1927, Heisenberg accepted appointment as professor of theoretical physics at the University of Leipzig, Germany. Friedrich Hund soon joined his former Göttingen colleague as Leipzig’s second professor of theoretical physics. Heisenberg headed the Institute for Theoretical Physics, which was a sub-section of the university’s Physics Institute, headed until 1936 by the experimentalist Peter Debye. Each of the three professors had his own students, assistants, postdocs, and laboratory technicians.”
Below are a few snapshots that I took while visiting the department. Special thanks to Diptabrata Paul (my former PhD student and currently a post-doc in Cichos’ group) for showing me around the department.
VISMAYA - History & Philosophy of Science 