Julius Podolanski (1905 – 1955), born in Poland grew up in
Germany (in what now is Thuringia) to where his parents had moved. He received his PhD at the university
of Jena. After having been assistant there and then with W. Heisenberg in Leipzig, although a German
citizen, due to his being of Jewish descent he could no longer work at a German university after 1933.
Jobless at first, he then could join the publisher Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, Leipzig and, when
proofreading H. Kramers’ article on Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik, he discovered errors and suggested
improvements. Thus he got into contact with the impressed author. In 1937 he wrote letters to M. Born,
H. Kramers and E. Schrödinger and presented them a manuscript on a new theory aimed
at “replacing Dirac’s theory of the electron.” It unfortunately yielded two further particles,
one spinless, the other uncharged with spin 1/2. Kramers managed to get him a position as
assistant at the University of Leiden. After hiding in Utrecht during the later years of the war, he
afterwards obtained a position in Utrecht with L. Rosenfeld, and since 1948 joined him again in
Manchester [517].