Gerhard Neumann (engineer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gerhard Neumann (born October 8, 1917 in Frankfurt (Oder) ; † November 2, 1997 in Swampscott , Massachusetts ) was a German-American mechanical engineer of Jewish origin and one of the inventors of the modern jet engine .

Life

Gerhard's father Siegfried Neumann was the owner of the North German bed spring factory in Frankfurt (Oder).

Gerhard Neumann was the son of the bed spring manufacturer Siegfried Neumann , one of the city's successful Jewish entrepreneurs. He had three children with his wife Frieda. The family did not practice the Jewish faith and the children were raised strictly Prussian. The Neumanns saw themselves as German patriots; the father Siegfried had received the Iron Cross first class in the First World War .

From 1927 Gerhard attended the Friedrichsgymnasium in Frankfurt (Oder). After studying at the engineering school in Mittweida from 1936 to 1938, he left Germany and went to China in December 1939 . There he became a member of a volunteer corps in 1941, from which the Flying Tigers emerged in 1942 . During this time he received his nickname Herman the German ( Hermann the German ).

On June 25, 1946, he received US citizenship and began working for the Douglas Aircraft Company . In October 1946 he married his wife Clarice in Los Angeles . In January 1947 he accepted a position as an engineer with the China National Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (CNRRA) Air Transport in Shanghai , before he took a position in the USA in March 1948 with the General Electric Aircraft Gas Turbine Division in Lynn, Massachusetts . The GE Aircraft Turbine Division was relocated to Evendale (Ohio) in 1950, and from 1952 Neumann devoted himself to the General Electric X39 , a nuclear reactor-powered jet engine, which, however, never left the prototype stage.

He was then head of development for the General Electric J79 jet engine. When this engine proved to be a great success, Neumann was placed under General Electric's entire jet engine business. In 1958 he received the Collier Trophy . Three years later, in March 1961, he became managing director of the aircraft propulsion division and finally, in 1963, vice president of General Electric. He held this post until January 1, 1980. Neumann held eight patents.

The adjustable compressor of the J79 , together with the combustion chambers and turbine stage, formed the so-called “core” engine, which became the basis for entire generations of GE jet engine families. Large turbofan engines like the CF6 also have the adjustable compressors of the J79.

Gerhard Neumann died of leukemia in 1997 .

Work philosophy

When Neumann joined the development department at GE, he was astonished at - in his opinion - cumbersome, costly and lengthy intermediate steps in the development of the compressor. Neumann is quoted from this period with the sentence: “Do it right first time!” (In a sense: “Do it right at the beginning!”) This uncompromising attitude towards quality became the basis for his advancement at GE.

Awards

Gerhard Neumann has received numerous awards for his life's work, including the Goddard Gold Medal (1970), the Daniel Guggenheim Medal (1979) and the Lilienthal Medal in 1995.

He was also inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1986 . In 1987 he was awarded an honorary doctorate.

In the Bavarian Niederalteich the local aviation museum is named in his honor Gerhard Neumann Museum . It shows the development of German and European aircraft construction from 1960 to the present. Gerhard Neumann and his wife Clarice visited the museum on January 21, 1997.

House 5 of the Mittweida University of Applied Sciences is named Gerhard-Neumann-Bau in his honor . The Mittweida University of Applied Sciences has been awarding the Gerhard Neumann Prize and the Gerhard Neumann Scholarship since 2008.

literature

  • Gerhard Neumann: China, jeep and jet engines. From car apprentice to top manager . Aviatic Verlag, Planegg 1989, ISBN 3-925505-04-0 .
  • Gerhard Neumann: Herman the German. Enemy Alien US Army Master Sergeant . Morrow, New York 1984, ISBN 0-688-01682-0 .
  • Gerhard Neumann: Herman The German. Just Lucky I Guess . Authorhouse, Bloomington 2004. ISBN 1-4184-7925-X .
  • Jan-Peter Domschke, Sabine Dorn, Hansgeorg Hofmann, Rosemarie Poch, Marion Stascheit: Mittweida's engineers all over the world . Hochschule Mittweida (ed.): Mittweida 2014, p. 72f.

Web links

Single receipts

  1. ↑ Frankfurt (Oder) - Hard on the border: Gerhard Neumann aka "Herman the German"
  2. ↑ Bernd Herrmann and Fred Pilarski: The Jet Jet Inventor , rbb-online (accessed on September 13, 2015).
  3. ↑ Jewish history on site. A virtual city walk through Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice , Dorothee Ahlers: Jewish entrepreneurs in the interwar period - Neumann bed spring factory ( memento from December 25, 2015 in the Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Neumann, Gerhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mechanical engineer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH October 8, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt (Oder)
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1997
Place of death Swampscott , Massachusetts