Bodo von Borries (physicist)

Bodo von Borries (born May 22, 1905 in Herford , † July 17, 1956 in Aachen ) was a German electrical engineer and co-inventor of the electron microscope .

Live and act

Borries was born as the son of District Administrator Franz von Borries in Westphalia. In 1924 he studied mechanical engineering at the TH Karlsruhe . Here he joined the Corps Saxonia . From the winter semester 1926/1927 he studied electrical engineering at the TH Danzig , then until the end of 1928 in Munich . From April 1929 he worked at the high-voltage laboratory of the TH Berlin and received his doctorate there in 1932. He then worked for a year as assistant to Max Knoll , who invented the electron microscope with Ernst Ruska in 1931. A long friendship and a lively scientific exchange of ideas developed with Ruska during these years.

In 1933 Borries went into industry, where he worked as an engineer at RWE in Essen . From 1934 to 1937 he was laboratory manager responsible for the development of surge protection devices at Siemens-Schuckertwerke in Berlin . As a result of his initiative, the development center for electron microscopy was established at Siemens & Halske AG in Berlin in 1937 , which he and Ruska jointly headed. In 1937 Borries married Hedwig Ruska, Ernst Ruska's sister. In 1938 the first prototype of the Siemens electron microscope was finally created, and the first series model a year later.

After the war, he founded the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Übermikoskopie in Düsseldorf in 1948 , and in 1949 he was involved in founding the German Society for Electron Microscopy . At the same time, the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf, today's University of Düsseldorf , appointed him honorary professor. In 1953 he was appointed full professor at the TH Aachen and was entrusted with setting up a chair for electron optics and precision mechanics , where he worked until his sudden death in 1956. Two years earlier he was elected President of the International Federation of Electron Microskope Societies .

In 1941, Bodo von Borries received the silver Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences for his services .

Works

• Catalog raisonné u. a. of digitized publications with Ernst Ruska
• B. v. Borries: The super microscopy - introduction, examination of its limits and outline of its results. Berlin 1949
• Lin Qing: On the early history of the electron microscope. GNT-Verlag, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 978-3-928186-02-5 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Bodo von Borries in the catalog of the German National Library
• Ernst Ruska: Bodo v. Borries † , Z. wiss. Microscope. 3/63, 1957, pp. 129-132. (PDF file; 624 kB)
• Pictures by Bodo v. Borries and Ernst Ruska
• Siemens History: Scientist: Bodo von Borries

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 100 years of Weinheim Senior Citizens' Convention , p. 139.Bochum, 1963