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Claus Jönsson
German physicist (1930–2024) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Claus Jönsson (26 May 1930 – 25 August 2024) was a German applied physicist who specialized in electron microscopy.[2]
Jönsson was born in Charlottenberg, Berlin, Germany in 1930 and grew up near Hamburg. He matriculated at the University of Tübingen to study physics in 1953. Due to a critical shortage of student housing, he had to rent a space 12 km away.[2]
Jönsson came under the tutelage of Gottfried Möllenstedt, the "German pope" of electron microscopy.[2] In 1961, Jönsson published the results of his double-slit experiment performed with beams of electrons,[3][4] something previously thought to be unfeasible in practice.[2] Jönsson conducted his experiment in 1959 for his doctoral dissertation at Tübingen, working late at night.[2] He discovered how to focus a narrow beam of electrons traveling towards the slits, resulting in the familiar interference pattern.[2] He observed interference fringes for up to five slits.[5] Jönsson's original paper was published in English for the first time in 1974 on the American Journal of Physics.[4] The journal's editors, Anthony French and Edwin Taylor, praised the experiment as "great" but noted that "pedagogically clean fundamental experiments" such as this one would likely not bring professional fame.[5] Indeed, Jönsson's experiment had been largely unknown and the double-slit experiment for electrons (and other quantum objects) was typically presented as a thought experiment.[5] More advanced versions of Jönsson's experiment were subsequently performed, including with individual electrons being sent towards the slits.[5][6]
Even so, in 2002, Jönsson's work was named "the most beautiful experiment" by readers of Physics World.[7][8]
He served as a professor at the Institute for Applied Physics at Tübingen from 1978 to his retirement in 1995.[9]
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