Draft:Kurt Schmeiser

Kurt Schmeiser (26 June 1911 – 1979) was a German physicist who contributed early research into cosmic rays and  extensive air showers.

Schmeiser completed his undergraduate studies at Heidelberg University. In May 1936 he became a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (at the time the Institute for Physics at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research), studying cosmic rays under Walther Bothe. He received his doctorate in 1938 after publishing his dissertation on so-called "hard cosmic-ray showers". In this paper, Schmeiser and Bothe were the first physicists of the time to observe that the transition curves reported by Bruno Rossi implied that cosmic-ray showers must also occur in air, and not just in materials at the ground such as lead.

Schmeiser was the recipient of a German Research Foundation scholarship and remained at the institute until 1939, after which he worked at IG Farben in Oppau. After World War II, he returned to the institute and authored a number of papers and books about radioisotopes.