Hans A. Bethe was born in Strasbourg, France, on October 30, 1906. A superb student in high school, he received a Physics Degree from the University of Strasbourg in 1926 and a Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig in 1930
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In 1935, while a visiting associate professor at Columbia University, he developed a model of the energy production of stars based on stellar theory and on experimental data from the Zeeman effect on atomic absorption lines in hydrogen and helium. In 1939, after returning to Germany as a professor at the University of Hamburg, he wrote an important textbook on Astrophysics which was translated into English by the U.S. Navy in 1943 and became a standard reference work for American students of Astrophysics.
In 1945, Bethe accepted a full professorship at Cornell University where he spent his academic career until his retirement in 1983. He received many honors for his work including the Max Planck Medal in 1961 and the Enrico Fermi Award in 1967. He died in Berlin, Germany on February 20, 2005.