# Walter Franz

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For the Minnesota politician, see [Walter Franz (politician)](/source/Walter_Franz_(politician)).

**Walter Franz** (8 April 1911, in [Munich](/source/Munich) – 16 February 1992, in [Münster](/source/M%C3%BCnster)) was a German theoretical [physicist](/source/Physicist) who independently discovered the [Franz–Keldysh effect](/source/Franz%E2%80%93Keldysh_effect).

Franz was a student of [Arnold Sommerfeld](/source/Arnold_Sommerfeld) at the [Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München](/source/Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit%C3%A4t_M%C3%BCnchen) (LMU) in Germany. There he was granted the doctoral degree Dr.phil. in 1934. The (German) title of his dissertation was [*Comptoneffekt*](/source/Compton_scattering) *am gebundenen Elektron*.[1][2] In the preface to the book *Optik*, Sommerfeld cited him for "the most recent and particularly lucid treatment" of the vectorial generalization of [Huygens’ principle](/source/Huygens%E2%80%93Fresnel_principle).[3]

With [Adolf Kratzer](/source/Adolf_Kratzer), another student of Sommerfeld, Franz co-authored the book [*Transzendente Funktionen*](/source/Transcendental_function). The article in which Franz independently published the Franz–Keldysh effect was published in 1958.

## Selected bibliography

- Adolf Kratzer and Walter Franz, *Transzendente Funktionen* (Akadem. Verl.-Ges. Geest & Portig, 1960)
- W. Franz, *Die Streuung von Strahlung am magnetischen Elektron*, *Annalen der Physik* **425**, Issue 8, 689-707 (1938)
- Walter Franz, *Einfluß eines elektrischen Feldes auf eine optische Absorptionskante*, *Z. Naturforschung* **13a**, 484-489 (1958)

## Notes

1. [Walter Franz](https://www.mathgenealogy.org/id.php?id=66697) at the Mathematics Genealogy Project ([MGP](/source/Mathematics_Genealogy_Project)). This database also lists more than 20 doctoral students supervised by Franz at the [Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster](/source/University_of_M%C3%BCnster).

1. [Hajo Leschke](https://www.emergent.physics.nat.fau.de/dr-hajo-leschke/academic-lineage-of-hajo-leschke\) at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. This webpage also cites the birth and death years of Franz.

1. Arnold Sommerfeld, translated from the first German edition by Otto Laporte and Peter A. Moldauer *[Optics - Lectures on Theoretical Physics Volume IV](/source/Lectures_on_Theoretical_Physics)* (Academic Press, 1964), p. vi

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