Erwin Meyer (physicist)

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Erwin Walter Meyer (born July 21, 1899 in Königshütte in Upper Silesia , † March 6, 1972 in Pontresina , Switzerland ) was a German physicist who dealt with acoustics and vibration physics.

Life

Erwin Meyer was born in 1899 as the son of the royal postal assistant Paul Meyer and his wife Margarethe born. Schleiffer born. From 1918 he studied physics and mathematics at the University of Breslau , where he received his doctorate in acoustics under Erich Waetzmann ( ponderometric effects of sound waves on resonating membranes ) in 1922 . He passed his state examination and was then in 1923/24 Otto Lummer's lecture assistant in Breslau. In 1924 he went to the Telegraph Technology Reichsamt in Berlin, where he developed many of today's common acoustic measurement technology and electroacoustics procedures. In 1928 he completed his habilitation at the TU Berlin ( modern methods of sound analysis ), where he then taught technical acoustics as a private lecturer, and from 1929 headed the acoustics department of the then newly founded Heinrich Hertz Institute for vibration research in Berlin. In 1932 he married in Berlin. As early as 1936 he gave guest lectures at US universities and in 1937 at the University of London (which resulted in a book). In 1939 he became a full professor at the TU Berlin. In 1947 he became head of the then newly founded third physics institute at the University of Göttingen . He died of a heart attack on a winter vacation. His successor in Göttingen was his student Manfred Schroeder .

Meyer already had an international reputation as an acoustics expert in the 1930s. For example, the lining of anechoic rooms (for measurements) with absorption wedges made of porous material and a measurement method for the level of modulation of records ( Meyer-Breite , with G. Buchmann 1930) come from him. At the end of the 1930s he also dealt with ultrasound for material testing and, during World War II, with sound absorption skins for submarines (code name Alberich ). He published the results of the secret war research from 1946 for the US Navy ( Sound Absorption and Sound Absorbers in Water ). After the war, for example, he developed methods of room acoustics (the Haas effect was discovered by Helmut Haas at his institute in 1949, research of models with microwaves was carried out, for example, by his doctoral student Manfred Schroeder ) and was a consultant for the acoustics of numerous hall buildings in Germany committed and investigated molecular acoustics (with techniques that the chemist Manfred Eigen in Göttingen then used in his investigation of ultrafast chemical reactions, which brought him the Nobel Prize).

He is co-founder of the Akustische Zeitschrift (1936 to 1944) and Acustica (1951) and wrote textbooks on vibration physics and acoustics. In 1931 he became a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America , to which he had been a member since 1929 and whose Sabine Medal he received in 1964. In 1933 he received the Gauß-Weber-Gedenkmünze and in 1961 the Gauß-Weber-Medal of the University of Göttingen. Since 1950 he was a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and 1957 a member (senior member) of the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York. In 1958 he received an honorary doctorate from the TU Berlin. In 1969 he received the Lord Rayleigh Gold Medal from the British Acoustical Society, which was first awarded to him. Lothar Cremer is also one of his doctoral students .

Fonts

  • Electro-Acoustics, London, G. Bell and son, 1939
  • with Dieter Guicking: Schwingungslehre, Vieweg 1974
  • with Ernst-Georg Neumann: Physikalische und Technische Akustik, Vieweg 1967, 3rd edition 1979 (English translation Academic Press 1972)
  • with Reinhard Pottel: Physical basics of high frequency technology, Vieweg 1969

literature

Web links

References

  1. ↑ a b c registry office Königshütte I: birth register . No. 761/1899.
  2. ↑ In 1944 such a submarine (U-480) was used in the English Channel, but was destroyed by a mine in February 1945. The wreck was discovered in 1998.
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 167.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Erwin
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer, Erwin Walter (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH July 21, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigshütte
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1972
Place of death Pontresina