Stefan Meyer

Stefan Meyer (27 April 1872 – 29 December 1949) was an Austrian physicist involved in research on radioactivity. He became director of the Institute for Radium Research in Vienna and received the Lieben Prize in 1913 for his research on radium. He was the brother of Hans Leopold Meyer who was also awarded the Lieben Prize.

Life and work Stefan was the second son of Jewish parents: a lawyer and notary Gotthelf Karl Meyer and his wife Clara (née Goldschmidt, sister of Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt). He went to school in Vienna and later graduated from gymnasium in Horn in 1892. He studied physics at the University of Vienna and attended the University of Leipzig for one year. He obtained his PhD in 1896 for work with Franz Serafin Exner and completed his habilitation in 1900. In 1897, Meyer became assistant of Ludwig Boltzmann at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Vienna. His research was dedicated to magnetic permeability of liquids. After a talk of Friedrich Oskar Giesel – a pioneer in the research and production of radium – he obtained a sample of radium from Giesel to determine magnetic properties of the new element. Meyer and his colleague Egon von Schweidler were able to show that the Becquerel rays (beta rays) could be deflected by magnetic fields; this effect was discovered simultaneously by several scientists, but Meyer et al. also showed that the radiation from polonium (alpha rays) behaved differently in the magnetic field. This book became a standard German textbook on radioactivity similar to the book of Curie in French and the book of Rutherford in English. During his forced retirement, he wrote a book on musical instruments and acoustics.