Egon Schweidler

Egon Schweidler (10 February 1873–10 February 1948), known until 1919 as Egon Ritter von Schweidler, was an Austrian physicist. The von Schweidler law in dielectrics is named after him.

Biography He was born in 1873 in Vienna as the son of the court and Gerichtsadvokaten Emil von Schweidler born in Vienna. After studying physics and mathematics, he earned his doctorate with a dissertation "On the internal friction of mercury and some Amalgamen" (1895). He was assistant to Franz Exner.

Career In 1899, he went to the University of Vienna. In 1911 he was appointed as an associate professor. From 1911 to 1926, he was the head of the Department of Experimental Physics at the University of Innsbruck, where he was dean in 1924 and rector in 1925/26. In 1926, he returned as per his appeal as an Ordinary II at the Physics Institute of the University of Vienna. There, he also worked as a secretary (1929–1933), Secretary-General (1933–1938), and Vice President (1939–1945) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1933, he was also elected chairman of the German Physical Society.

He died in Salzburg Seeham in 1948.

Legacy From an historical view, his major works in the field of atmospheric electricity should be mentioned. Schweidler's scientific work was recognized very early (1907) with the award of "Baumgartner Prize" of the Vienna Academy of Sciences for the study of the anomalies in the behavior of dielectrics. He pointed (in 1899) with Stefan Meyer, among others, the statistical nature of the radioactive decay or the magnetic deflection of beta radiation as fast electrons. His predicted variations (1905) of the ionization radiation formed in the end a large number of theoretical and experimental investigations.