| Description | Simon resumed his studies of physics and chemistry at the University of Berlin in 1919. There he came under the influence of Max Planck, von Laue, Haber, and in particular Nernst, then director of the Physikalisch-Chemisches Institut of the university, under whom Simon did his thesis work on specific heats at low temperatures. He became DPhil in December 1921 and spent the next ten years in the same laboratory, becoming in 1924 a Privatdozent and in 1927 an Extraordinarius (associate professor).
The Berlin period established Simon's reputation as a great thermodynamicist and the outstanding low temperature physicist of his generation. Much of his work in Berlin was directly connected with the Nernst heat theorem and it is largely thanks to Simon's work that it has come to be regarded as the third law of thermodynamics, equal in fundamental importance to the first and second laws.
In 1920 Simon started work for his Ph.D (under Walther Nernst), which concerned measurement of specific heats at low temperatures. |