Emil Rupp

Emil Rupp (Philipp Heinrich Emil Rupp, 1898-1979) was a German physicist. Regarded as one of the world's top scientists in the late 1920s.^[1][2] he was later forced to admit that all his findings and experiments were forged.

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His canal ray experiments seemed to corroborate Einstein's theories on wave-particle duality. He published them together with Einstein, who was happy about Rupp's alleged findings and didn't question their accuracy.

In 1935, some fellow physicists at the AEG labs grew suspicious of him when he claimed having accelerated protons at 500 kV, something he couldn't have the technical facilities to achieve. Rupp had to publicly retract five publications from the previous year. He attached a psychiatric diagnosis by Dr. Emil von Gebsattel that said he had written them under the influence of "dreamlike states" caused by psychasthenia.

References

1. ^ "[Emil] Rupp, in the late twenties, early thirties, was regarded as the most important and most competent experimental physicist. He did incredible things." stated Walther Gerlach in an interview with T.S. Kuhn on 18 Feb 1963, Archive for History of Quantum Physics, cited after van Dongen.
2. ^ Jeroen van Dongen: Emil Rupp, Albert Einstein and the Canal Ray Experiments on Wave-Particle Duality: Scientific Fraud and Theoretical Bias. In: Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37 Suppl. (2007), 73-120. [1]

Further reading

• French, A.P.: "The strange case of Emil Rupp", Physics in Perspective, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp. 3-21 (1999) (abstract)
• van Dongen, Jeroen: "Emil Rupp, Albert Einstein and the Canal Ray Experiments on Wave-Particle Duality: Scientific Fraud and Theoretical Bias", Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37 Suppl. (2007), 73-120.
• van Dongen, Jeroen: "The interpretation of the Einstein-Rupp experiments and their influence on the history of quantum mechanics", Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 37 Suppl. (2007), 121-131.
• Facsimile of a letter (in German) from Arnold Sommerfeld to Rupp, requesting details of an experiment on electron refraction, 30 Jan 1930