Fritz Rohrlich and His Work

Fritz Rohrlich was born in Vienna, Austria, on May 12, 1921, as the only child of the lawyer Egon Rohrlich and his wife Illy, n6e Schwarz. His seven year older half-brother, George, lived with his father's first wife (Rosa Tenzer), but spent his weekends usually at his father's home. George was to play an important role in the life of Fritz. Both of them attended the same high school, the Realgymnasium in Vienna's first district. It must have had good science teachers, for it produced a number of distinguished physicists, among them Victor F. Weisskopf. Fritz's interest in the physical sciences was stimulated by his teachers as well as--and perhaps even more--by George who used to supply him with books on popular science, as well as on philosophical and ideological issues, such as Hfickel's Die Weltriitsel, Spinoza's Ethics, and Pinsker's Autoemanzipation. The greatest influence upon Fritz's mind, however, had Hans Reichenbach's Atom und Kosmos, for it led him to the decision to study physics and philosophy at the University of Vienna. But political events thwarted the realization of this plan. In March 1938 Hitler marched into Vienna. Fritz had to leave school without obtaining the high school diploma that would have entitled him to study at the University. His application to study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was turned down on the ground that the applicant had not completed high school. But having had, fortunately, applied for enrollment also at the Haifa Institute for Technology, he was able to leave for Palestine on a Technion student visa in February 1939. His parents were not allowed to join him because the British Mandatory Government, yielding to Arab pressure, did not permit