Frits Zernike, 1888-1966

Frits Zernike was born in Amsterdam on 16 July 1888, both his parents being school-teachers. He was initially trained at Amsterdam University as a chemist and at the age of 24 was awarded a University prize for work on the theory of critical opalescence in gases. Two years later, in 1914, he was responsible jointly with Örnstein for the derivation of the Örnstein-Zernike relation in critical-point theory. His doctorate soon followed, awarded for a theoretical dissertation on critical opalescence and the derivation of Avogadro’s number therefrom. His first appointment was as assistant at the University of Gronigen to the astronomer Kapteyn but he soon moved over as a junior theoretician to the physics department where in due course he became Professor of Theoretical Physics. Zernike possessed that very rare gift of being at one and the same time a fine theoretician and a first-rate experimentalist. His early appointment at Groningen was at first a little clouded by the fact that his chief, treating him purely as a theoretical physicist, gave him scant laboratory facilities, but a change in Directorate soon rectified this.