He was the son of Abraham Laub and Anna Maria Schenborn. Laub, who converted from the
Jewish to the
Catholic faith and changed his name from "Jakub" into "Jakob Johann", first visited High School in Rzeszów. Next stations were the
University of Vienna, the
University of Kraków and finally the
University of Göttingen, where he studied
mathematics under
David Hilbert,
Woldemar Voigt,
Walther Nernst,
Karl Schwarzschild and
Hermann Minkowski. Afterwards he went to the
University of Würzburg, where he attained a doctorate in 1907. Soon he established closer contact to
Wilhelm Wien,
Arnold Sommerfeld,
Johannes Stark, and
Albert Einstein. When he travelled to
Bern in 1908 to visit Einstein (with whom it corresponded later frequently and was friendly) he found him still working as a patent employee. This he called a "stair joke [Treppenwitz] of history". In 1909 he became co-worker of
Philipp Lenard at the
University of Heidelberg. In 1911 he emigrated with his wife Ruth Elisa Wendt to
Argentina. There he worked at the geophysical and astronomical observatory in
La Plata. Afterwards he obtained a leading position at a Physics Department in
Buenos Aires. After accepting the Argentine nationality (with the Spanish first name variant "Jacobo Juan") he began to work in the
Diplomatic service of Argentina. In 1947 he returned to
Germany. In his new home town Freiburg he went into economic troubles and therefore sold a part of his correspondence with Einstein. ==Scientific Work==