Erwin Gigas

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Erwin Friedrich Oswald Gigas (born June 3, 1899 in Warmbrunn , Silesia, † January 28, 1976 in Málaga , Spain ) was a German geodesist , geophysicist, inventor and measurement technician . As head of the Frankfurt Institute for Applied Geodesy for many years , he did a. a. earned for the merger of the European surveying networks into the European network .

Life

Erwin Gigas attended the Oberrealschule in Berlin-Schöneberg , studied from 1918 to 1923 at the Technical University of Berlin and from 1926 to 1927 at the Agricultural University of Berlin. At the TH he was assistant and 1927/28 lecturer . In 1928 he became a government councilor and in 1938 a senior government councilor at the Berlin Reichsamt für Landesaufnahme , which - regardless of its partly political orientation - earned the merit of making a significant contribution to the later standardization of the Central European surveying networks , the ED50 and the European network .

As soon after the war, the US Army survey in Bamberg , the Institute of Geodesy founded Gigas was appointed as its director. The largest project of this research institute was the completion of the Central European Network over Central Europe, which was started in the Third Reich and published in 1949.

In 1950 he became director of a newly founded surveying academy institute in Frankfurt am Main (see Institute for Applied Geodesy ). In 1957 he received an important teaching position at the new Bonn Institute for Theoretical Geodesy from his former competitor Prof. Helmut Wolf, who was appointed there . The course was called “Physical-Geodetic Measurement Methods ” and Gigas expanded it in the sixties to create the textbook of the same name , published in 1966 . It deals with the strongly expanding field of various measuring methods in an original, extraordinary in many ways and is still - despite interim revolution in electronics , the EDM and the space  - an important reference.

In the 1950s he developed prototypes for electro-optical distance measurement and the IfAG distance meter, in the following years the motorized Gigas theodolite , some special instruments for geodetic astronomy and a kinetheodolite with automatic time measurement for visual satellite observation .

In 1964, Prof. Gigas, whose work is also reflected in the multi-volume series Handbuch der Vermessungskunde , was retired from active professional life in Munich . The following year he became Head of Development Aid in Central America. From 1966 to 1969 he worked as a research cartographer for the US Coast and Geodetic Survey .

On February 6, 1953, Gigas received an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Hanover , and later the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class. He had been a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences Tucuman , Argentina , since 1950 , and an honorary member of the Soc. Brasileira Cartogr. Rio de Janeiro and since 1965 Commander of the Order del Quetzal , Guatemala . He was also a member of the German Geodetic Commission , the German Society for Cartography , the German Society for Photogrammetry , the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and an honorary member of the German Association for Surveying .

Gigas married Elfriede Müller, with whom he had four children.

Fonts

  • Physical-geodetic measuring methods . 502 pp., Dümmler-Verlag, Bonn 1966
  • Geodetic distance measurements . DGK Series B, Volume 8, Frankfurt 1954.

literature

  • DGK : Ceremonial meeting on the occasion of the farewell to Erwin Gigas on July 10, 1964 in Munich. IfAG series, DGK series A, issue 45, Frankfurt 1965.
  • Karl Ledersteger : Handbuch der Vermessungskunde, Volume V (and other volumes of the JEK series), Stuttgart 1968.
  • Kürschner's German Scholars Calendar . 1976, pp. 906 and 3652
  • Walter Habel (Ed.): Who is who? The German Who's Who . 12th edition of Degener's Who is it ?, Arani, Berlin 1955
  • Otto Wenig (Ed.): Directory of professors and lecturers at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn 1818–1968 . Bouvier, Bonn 1968.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Central European Triangle Network. Basics . 122p., Astronomische Nachrichten, Bamberger Verlagshaus Meisenbach 1949

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gigas, Erwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gigas, Erwin Friedrich Oswald (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geodesist, geophysicist and measurement technician
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Warmbrunn
DATE OF DEATH January 28, 1976
Place of death Málaga , Spain