Gerhard H. Dieke Professorship in Physics and Astronomy

GERHARD H. DIEKE, one of the world’s foremost experts in spectroscopy, was a professor of physics at Johns Hopkins for 35 years and chair of the department from 1950 until his death in 1965. He helped develop the spectroscopic techniques used in the chemical analysis of metals–a discovery that was credited with saving millions of man-hours during World War II by expediting the sorting of scrap metal–and his research on crystals led to the first lasers.