Wolfgang Gentner (23.07.1906-4.09.1980) was a German physicist and a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (1937), its president in 1964-67. He was born in Frankfurt am Main. He graduated from the University of Frankfurt (1930). In 1933-35 he worked in the laboratory of M. and P. Curie at the Radium Institute in Paris, and in 1936—46 (with interruptions) at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics. In 1946 — 58 he was professor and director of the Institute of Physics of the University of Freiburg, and in 1958 —74 director of the Institute of Nuclear Physics and professor at the University of Heidelberg (in 1955 —59 he was also director of CERN's synchrocyclotron).
His research concerned nuclear physics, radioactivity, accelerator technology, biophysics, geochemistry and cosmochemistry. Together with W. Bothe he was the first to observe, in 1937, the nuclear photoeffect in heavy nuclei (from lithium to bismuth) under the action of gamma quanta, and with him he built a Van de Graaff accelerator and a cyclotron (1943). He studied the chronology of the solar system and the formation of meteorites and cosmic dust.