Born on September 14, 1920, in Hanover, Wilhelm Macke, opens an external URL in a new window began his studies in Leipzig in 1943 earning his preliminary diploma during a sabbatical where he was an assistant to Friedrich Hund, a man he admired his whole life. His resulting fascination with theoretical physics prompted him to continue his studies in Göttingen after the end of the war, where he earned his doctorate in 1949 as the last personal Max Planck scholarship holder under Werner Heisenberg.

Macke was in Brazil between 1952 to 1954 to set up an institute for theoretical physics in São Paulo. When nuclear physics experiments were allowed again in Germany in 1954, he accepted a call to the TU Dresden, where he set up the Institute for Theoretical Nuclear Physics under generous conditions in addition to heading the Institute for Theoretical Physics and was the founding dean of the Faculty for Nuclear Technology. After the Wall was built, he increasingly came into conflict with the regime of the former GDR and was subjected to reprisals. In 1968 he managed to return to the West.

In Dresden he wrote a series of 6 textbooks. Four of these volumes deal with the basics of all theoretical physics in a consistent nomenclature and thus fill the market gap between textbooks that focus on a single sub-area and such comprehensive series as e.g. the well-known 10-volume work by Landau and Lifschitz. In 1969 Macke was appointed to the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, where he applied his experience as a founding professor with great success. The focus of his scientific work until his retirement in 1990 was in the field of the many-body theory of electrons. His passion, however, was educating students and he was a gifted teacher (and feared examiner). His goal was to convey critical thinking in general and the big connections in physics in particular. His committed and pointed lectures remain unforgettable for his listeners. He passed away on February 20, 1994.

These physics text books by Prof. Wilhelm Macke are available in the JKU's physics library.