Description
Letters, mainly from fellow European physicists, many of them German, and written
primarily in German; copies and/or drafts of his letters; documents and letters re professional
appointments; personalia; reprints of papers; manuscript of Probability of Physics; material relating to
his paper on Ludwig Boltzmann; notes, manuscripts of unpublished papers, etc.
Background
George Cecil Jaffé was born in Moscow on January 16, 1880. He received his Ph.D. in physical
chemistry at the University of Leipzig in 1903, having studied under Ludwig Boltzmann. In 1903-1904 he
worked in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England, under J. J. Thomson, and in 1904-1905 and
again in 1911-1912 he did research in the laboratory of the Curies in Paris. Resuming his work after the
war, he taught first at the University of Leipzig and was then given the chair for theoretical physics
at Giessen in 1926. Having been deprived of his position by the Nazi anti-semitic decrees in 1933,
Jaffé was without employment until he emigrated to the United States in 1939. He taught at
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, until his retirement in 1950, when he moved to Berkeley,
California. He died in 1965.
Extent
Number of containers: 2 boxes
Linear feet: 1
Restrictions
Copyright has not been assigned to The Bancroft Library. All requests for permission to publish or
quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Head of Public Services. Permission for
publication is given on behalf of The Bancroft Library as the owner of the physical items and is not
intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the
reader.
Availability
Collection is open for research.