Johannes Stark
Stark, Johannes (1874-1957) was a German physicist who received the 1919 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the Doppler effect in rays of positively charged ions passing through holes in the cathode of a vacuum (known as canal rays) and for his discovery of the Stark effect, an influence that an electrical field exerts on the emission of light and other electromagnetic radiation by atoms.
After studying math, chemistry, physics, and crystallography at the University of Munich, Stark received his Ph.D. degree from there in 1897 and through 1922 held teaching positions in several of Germany's universities. In 1905, Stark discovered the Doppler effect in canal rays. His success in producing the Stark effect first came in 1913, while he was a professor at the Technische Hochschule in Aachen.
Stark achieved early acclaim as an exceptional theoretical physicist, which, in addition to his Nobel Prize, included winning the Baumgartner Prize from the Vienna Academy of Sciences, the Vahlbruch Prize from the Gottingen Academy of Sciences, and the Matteucci Medal of the Rome Academy. But his increasingly extreme views began to isolate him from others in the scientific community and by 1922, he had been virtually ostracized by almost all of his colleagues. That year, he published The Present Crisis in German Physics, a virulent attack on the theory of relativity and quantum theory in general and on Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr in particular. Through the 1920's and 1930's Stark became ever more deeply involved in Nazism and attempted to establish “Aryan science” in Germany, but both his political and academic goals were ultimately thwarted. In 1947, due to his involvement with Hitler's regime, he was tried in a denazification court and sentenced to four years in a labor camp.