Friedrich Georg Houtermans (22.01.1903-1.03.1966) was a physicist. He was born in Danzig (now Gdańsk). In 1928 he received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Göttingen. In 1933 - 34 he worked in England, in 1935 — 37 in the USSR (the Kharkov Physico-Technical Institute), in 1940—45 in a research laboratory in Charlottenburg, and in 1945 —52 at the University of Göttingen (professor from 1950). From 1952 he was professor at the University of Bern and director of the Centre for Physical Research at the university.
His work was in the field of nuclear physics, high-energy physics and nuclear geology. In 1929, with R. Atkinson, he put forward the idea of the thermonuclear nature of the sources of the stars' energy. He studied the possibility of a nuclear fission chain reaction (1941). He determined the age of geological objects, meteorites, by measuring their isotopic composition. He carried out a number of studies that preceded the laser.