Scientists from the Province of Brandenburg

Walther_Kruse

Walther Kruse (September 8, 1864 – 1943) was a German bacteriologist who was a native of Berlin.
In 1888 he received his doctorate from Berlin, where he was a student of Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902). From 1889 until 1892 he worked as a bacteriologist in Naples, and in 1892 travelled to Egypt to perform research on dysentery. In 1893 he became an assistant to hygienist Carl Flügge (1847–1923) in Breslau, and in 1898 became an associate professor at the University of Bonn. Later he served as a full professor in Königsberg (1900), Bonn (1911) and Leipzig (1913).
Walther Kruse is remembered for his work in parasitology and his research of intestinal bacteria infections. He performed extensive studies of Shigella dysenteriae during an epidemic of dysentery in the Ruhr area of Germany. This organism is sometimes referred to as the "Shiga–Kruse bacillus", and its associated disease as "Shiga–Kruse dysentery". These eponyms are shared with Japanese bacteriologist Kiyoshi Shiga (1871–1957). Kruse documented his findings in a 1900 treatise titled Über die Ruhr als Volkskrankheit und ihren Erreger.
In 1914 he demonstrated that the common cold could be transmitted to healthy individuals via nasal secretions that were free of bacteria. The results of these experiments were published in a treatise called Die Erreger von Husten und Schnupfen (1914). A specialized tool used to spread material over the surface of a culture medium is called "Kruse's brush".

Werner_Kolhörster

Werner Heinrich Gustav Kolhörster (28 December 1887 – 5 August 1946) was a German physicist and a pioneer of research into cosmic rays.
Kolhörster was born in Schwiebus (Świebodzin), Brandenburg Province of Prussia. While attending the University of Halle, he studied physics under Friedrich Ernst Dorn.Repeating the cosmic ray experiments of Victor Hess, in 1913-14 Kolhörster ascended by balloon to an altitude of 9 km, where he confirmed Hess' result that the ionization rate from cosmic rays was greater at that altitude than at sea level. This was evidence that the source for these ionizing rays came from above the Earth's atmosphere.Kolhörster continued his physics studies at the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in Berlin, beginning in 1914. During World War I he made measurements of atmospheric electricity in Turkey. Following the war he became a teacher. He joined the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt in 1922.In 1928–29, Walter Bothe and Kolhörster used the Geiger-Muller detector to demonstrate that cosmic rays were actually charged particles. The ability of these particles to penetrate the Earth's atmosphere meant that they must be highly energetic.In 1930, Kolhörster started the first institute for the study of cosmic rays in Potsdam, with financial assistance from the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He became director of the Institut für Hohenstrahlungsforschung in Berlin-Dahlem in 1935, where he was appointed an ordinary professor.Kolhörster was killed in a car crash in Munich. The crater Kolhörster on the Moon is named in his memory.

Walther_Kossel

Walther Ludwig Julius Kossel (4 January 1888 – 22 May 1956) was a German physicist known for his theory of the chemical bond (ionic bond/octet rule), Sommerfeld–Kossel displacement law of atomic spectra, the Kossel-Stranski model for crystal growth, and the Kossel effect. Walther was the son of Albrecht Kossel who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1910.

Wilhelm_Biltz

Wilhelm Biltz (8 March 1877 – 13 November 1943) was a German chemist and scientific editor.
In addition to his scholarly work, Biltz is noted for commanding the principal German tank involved in the first ever tank-on-tank battle in history at the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux.