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Finding Aid to the George C. Jaffé Papers, 1902-1962
BANC MSS 76/210 z
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Collection Title: George C. Jaffé Papers,
Date (inclusive): 1902-1962
Collection Number: BANC MSS 76/210 z
Creator:
Jaffé, George C.
Extent:
Number of containers: 2 boxes
Linear feet: 1
Repository: The Bancroft Library
Berkeley, California 94720-6000
Physical Location: For current information on the location of these materials, please
consult the Library's online catalog.
Abstract: 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his paper on Ludwig Boltzmann; notes, manuscripts of unpublished papers, etc.
Languages Represented: Collection materials are in German
Collection is open for research.
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.
[Identification of item], George C. Jaffé Papers, BANC MSS 76/210 z, The Bancroft Library,
University of California, Berkeley.
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.
Jaffé specialized in theoretical physics, but was also interested in the experimental
conductivity of liquid and solid dielectrics and in the philosophy of science. He wrote two books,
Handbuch der Experimental-Physik,vol. 19 (1928), and
Zwei Dialoge
über Raum und Zeit
(1931), and many papers.
The Papers in this collection were donated by Professor Jaffé's son, John L. Jaffé,
to The Bancroft Library in 1976. Housed in two boxes, the collection includes letters to
Jaffé, largely from prominent European physicists, covering the years 1902-1962; copies of
letters by Jaffé; miscellaneous personal documents; reprints of his papers; and materials
relating to his papers on Boltzmann and on probability in physics. Portraits of Jaffé have
been removed to the Library's photographic collection.
The Key to Arrangement which follows describes the collection in greater detail.