Laue, Max Theodor Felix von (1879–1960)

German physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1914 for his pioneering work in measuring the wavelength of X-rays by their diffraction through the closely spaced atoms in a crystal. His work led to the techniques of X-ray spectroscopy, used in nuclear physics, and X-ray diffraction, used to elucidate the molecular structure of complex biological materials.

Laue was born near Koblenz and studied at Göttingen and Berlin. He was assistant to Max Planck at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Berlin 1905–09, and worked at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Munich 1909–14, when he became professor at Frankfurt. After World War I he became director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Berlin, resigning in 1943 in protest against Nazi policies. Although Laue had refused to participate in the German atomic-energy project, he was interned in Britain by the Allies after the war. He returned to Germany in 1946, and in 1951 became director of the Max Planck Institute for Research in Physical Chemistry. In 1912 Laue's idea of passing X-rays through crystals was first tested, and provided experimental demonstration of the nature of both crystal structure and X-ray radiation. He had initially considered only the interaction between the atoms in the crystal and the radiation, but later included a correction for the forces acting between the atoms.