Alfred M. Bloch

Alfred M. Bloch (* 1904 in Weiden , Bavaria; † May 11, 1979 ) was a German-British engineer.

Life and activity

After attending school, Bloch studied at the Technical University in Munich , where he obtained a doctorate in engineering. From 1929 to 1933 he was employed as an assistant for applied mechanics at this university. He also worked for the State Railways in Munich, where he developed an advanced signal transmission system.

After the National Socialists came to power in the spring of 1933, Bloch was ousted from university life because of his Jewish descent. In 1934 he moved to Dublin , where he did research at Trinity College . At that time he invented a device for measuring surface resistance strain. In 1936 he moved to the General Electric Company for which he worked as an electrical engineer until 1964.

At the end of the 1930s, the National Socialist police officers classified Bloch as an enemy of the state: in the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people who would be killed by the occupation forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht Subsequent SS special commands were to be identified and arrested with special priority.

From 1939 to 1942 he was interned as an enemy alien .

In 1966, Bloch, whose specialty was high-frequency vibrations, was appointed Associate Reader for Electrical Engineering at Brunel University . In 1977 he received an honorary doctorate from this university.

literature

• Longman's Who's Who of British Scientists 1969/70.
• William D Rubinstein / Michael Jolles / Hilary L. Rubinstein: The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History , p. 101f.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Bloch on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum in London) .
2. ^ Alfred Bloch in the database Britain, Enemy Aliens and Internees