born May 9, 1927, Bochum, Ger.
German physicist.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Göttingen in 1951. He shared a 1967 Nobel Prize with Ronald Norrish (18971978) and George Porter (b. 1920) for work on extremely rapid chemical reaction s. His methods, called relaxation techniques, involve applying bursts of energy to a solution and following the rates of subsequent changes (flash photolysis ); reactions thus studied include hydrogen ion formation during water dissociation and keto-enol tautomerism .