Theodor Förster

Theodor Förster (May 15, 1910 – May 20, 1974) was a German physical chemist.
Theodor Förster undertook a Ph.D. under Erwin Madelung at the University of Frankfurt am Main (1933). In the same year he joined the Nazi Party and the SA. After his habilitation (in 1940) he became a lecturer in Leipzig. Following his research and teaching activities in Leipzig, he became a professor at the State University of Poznan (1942).
From 1947 to 1951 he worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics in Göttingen before becoming a professor at the University of Stuttgart.
Among his greatest achievements is his contribution to the understanding (1946) of FRET (Förster resonance energy transfer).
The Förster radius is named after Theodor Förster.

Work

• Förster, Theodor: Fluoreszenz organischer Verbindungen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1950. – Unveränd. Nachdr. d. 1. Aufl., im Literaturverz. erg. um spätere Veröff. d. Autors. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982 – ISBN 3-525-42312-8

Literature

• A. Weller: Nachruf auf Theodor Förster. In: Berichte der Bunsengesellschaft für Physikalische Chemie 78 (1974) p. 969 [with Porträt].
• George Porter: Some reflections on the work of Theodor Förster. In: Die Naturwissenschaften 63 (1976) 5, p. 207–211.