The German Institute Taipei on Saturday celebrated the life of late National Taiwan University (NTU) professor Wolfgang Kroll, a theoretical physicist who was the first scientist in Taiwan to publish in an international scientific journal.
Germany’s overseas representative office in Taiwan honored the late scientist on what would have been his 120th birthday on Saturday with a video posted across the institute’s social media accounts.
In the video, the institute’s science and technology officer, Julian Goldmann, praised Kroll as an example of academic exchanges between Taiwan and Germany.
Photo: CNA
Goldmann said Kroll was a student of Werner Heisenberg, the winner of the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, but later left Nazi Germany to maintain his scientific freedom in Japan.
While there, he served as a lecturer at Hokkaido University for five years, starting in 1937.
Continuing his academic employment in Japan’s education system, Kroll came to Taiwan in 1941 when Taiwan was still a Japanese colony to teach at the Imperial University of Taipei, which later became NTU.
Kroll decided to stay at NTU following Japan’s defeat in World War II when presented with the opportunity to be promoted to the position of associate professor in the university’s new physics department.
Subsequently, Kroll became one of the pioneering founders of the department and taught several courses, including theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, relativity, statistical mechanics, physical mathematics, and electronics.
He was also known for many "firsts," such as being Taiwan’s first Ph.D. professor of physics after the war and the first scholar in Taiwan to publish in Physical Review, an international peer-reviewed scientific journal established in 1893.
Kroll, who did not speak Mandarin, taught in a mix of English and Japanese. He eventually offered courses outside NTU, guest teaching in many schools around Taiwan even after his mandatory retirement from the university in 1976.
Kroll passed away in Taipei in 1992 from emphysema at the age of 87.
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