and Chemistry Wolfgang Kroll (March 21, 1906 – February 28, 1992) was a physicist, born in Greifswald, northern Germany, who received his doctorate in physics from the University of Breslau in 1930.

In August 1976, Kroll retired from the Department of Physics at National Taiwan University and became an honorary professor along with Xu Yunji the following year.

In the late 1970s, as Taiwan's economy began to take off, prices rose and Kroll's pension became relatively meagre, leaving him in a difficult position.

[1][4][6] During this period, he also met Edward Teller, who would become the father of the hydrogen bomb,[2] and between 1930 and 1937, Kroll published eight papers on quantum mechanics, magnetisation spectra, and thermoelectric effects, laying the foundation for his future independent research.

[10][4] However, since the salary at the Hokkaido Imperial University was not high, Kroll took a part-time job as a teacher of German at a nearby commercial school.

[1] From April 20, 1945, all prep teachers and students, including Kroll, were engaged in position construction between Tamsui and Xinzhuang from that month onwards and were disbanded and reinstated after the war.

[1] After the war, the Nationalist government took over Taiwan, and Luo Zongluo, who was in charge of receiving the Taipei Imperial University, became the first acting president of NTU after the war, and invited Kroll to stay at NTU, and was promoted from lecturer to associate professor and transferred to the Department of Physics to teach physics and German.

After Fu Sinian became the president of National Taiwan University, he was encouraged to stay in the office again, and his salary was raised at the same time.

[1][11] During this period, Kroll also mentored his assistant professor, Huang Zhenlin, in his research on the specific heat of solids and frequency spectra, and he completed a revision of the Houston method in 1955, using interpolation to determine the ISO-frequency spectral map, avoiding the singularity problem of the original Houston method at the high-frequency end.

[8] In 1957, Kroll was invited to teach part-time at Tunghai University by Wang Shuofu, the physics department chairman there.

[11] By 1963, Kroll, together with his graduate students, did research on the De Haas-Van Alphen effect of bound electrons and used the expression for the magnetic permeability by spreading the lattice's potential energy in a Fourier series.

[18][4] Students taught by Kroll said that he was also interested in electromagnetic differential equations with different boundary conditions and that Bessel functions were like "old friends to him".

[19] In 1988, at the suggestion of his early students, including Zhang Guolong and Lin Qingliang, Huang Huili, then head of the Department of Physics, proposed to the university that Kroll be awarded an honorary professorship.

[20] However, in the late 1970s, as Taiwan's economy began to take off, prices rose, making Kroll's pension relatively meagre and his life difficult to provide for his medical needs when he became ill.[2] As a result, he was assisted by a group of people, including students from his early premedical German classes, who had been taught by Kroll.

[1][2][13][8] The funeral service was conducted by Pastor Luo Rongguang, who later became the General Administrator of the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan.

[2] Kroll has been described as "the Prometheus who brought the fire of physics from Germany to Taiwan" [8] and most of the early Taiwanese physicists were his students.

[21] Huang Zhen-Lin, who later became the head of the Department of Physics at NTU, served as Kroll's assistant professor when he was young.

[1] Qiu Hongyi, the first Taiwanese astrophysicist to receive NASA's top honorary award for outstanding achievement and the first in the world to name a quasar,[22] said that Kroll was "one of his most respected teachers".

Kroll's father was a professor of linguistic literature,[a 7] taught at the University of Breslau, and was a high-ranking German government official with a prominent family background.

[4] Kroll was unmarried for the rest of his life,[2] but he had a son and a middle-aged woman who helped him with household chores for many years.