Carl von Weizsäcker was a German physicist and philosopher at the University of Strasbourg who, in 1944, published an important new version of the nebular hypothesis which explained the puzzling discrepancy between the comparatively low angular momentum of the Sun and the high angular momentum of the outer planets. Previously, in 1938, he had put forward, independently of Hans Bethe, the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen cycle as an important energy-making process in stars.

 

 

Von Weizsäcker was the longest-living member of the research team which carried out nuclear research in Germany during World War II, under the leadership of Werner Heisenberg.