Otto Kratky

Otto Kratky was born in Vienna as the son of the painter Rudolf Kratky. After graduating from high school, he studied chemistry at the Technical University Vienna and completed his studies in 1929 with a doctorate. After completing his university education, he became an assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin-Dahlem in 1928, a position he held until 1933. He then worked as a university lecturer at the University of Vienna until he returned to the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin in 1937 as the head of the X-ray department. From 1940 to 1943 he was a civil servant. He became a full professor at the Czech Technical University in Prague and from 1943 to 1945 head of the institute for physical chemistry there.[2][3]

From 1946 to 1972, Kratky was a professor at the University of Graz Institute for Physical Chemistry. In 1956/57 he served as rector of the university.[4]

In 1936, Kratky won the Haitinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.[5] In 1985 he was elected to the German order Pour le Mérite.[6] Kratky was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1964,[7] the Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1970,[8] and the Gregori Aminoff Prize in 1987.