Gernot Zippe

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Gernot Zippe (born November 13, 1917 in Warnsdorf , Austria-Hungary ; † May 7, 2008 ) was a physicist and inventor of a gas centrifuge .

Life

Gernot Zippe was the son of Anton Konrad Zippe . He studied physics at the University of Vienna , where he received his doctorate shortly before the start of the war. He then worked as a radium researcher. Since his studies he was a member of the Vienna Academic Gymnastics Club .

During World War II he was a flight instructor and scientist in the German Air Force .

In 1945 he became a Soviet prisoner of war and was forced to collaborate with other German researchers on uranium enrichment. Like Max Steenbeck and Soviet scientists (like IK Kikoin , EM Kamenev) he worked on the gas centrifuge for uranium enrichment ( isotope separation of uranium-235 and uranium-238). Zippe's research group initially worked in an institute in Sukhumi on the Black Sea, and from 1952 on in Leningrad . The Russians wanted an enrichment level of 15 percent. In the summer of 1953 he presented his gas centrifuge. After the research group had reached a degree of enrichment of 30 percent, they were allowed to return to their home countries. Zippe returned to Austria in 1957. When he attended a conference on centrifuge research in Amsterdam in 1957, he found that research in the West was far behind. Together with his colleague Rudolf Scheffel, he patented the “Zippe centrifuge”. This sparked bitterness among the Soviet scientists who were significantly involved in this, although no one in the Soviet Union made any official comments.

1958-1960 he was at the University of Virginia , presented his invention and worked with Jesse W. Beams .

He returned to Germany and worked at Degussa , where he improved the efficiency of his centrifuge. He later advised the Federal Society for Nuclear Process Engineering in Jülich, the Urenco company (formerly Uranit) and also the MAN company , which worked on behalf of Urenco on the project to build gas ultracentrifuges (GUZ) agreed between Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands in 1970 had been.

In 1977 he received the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Prize for his energy research, and in 1990 in Austria the Wilhelm Exner Medal . He was a member of the International Organizing Committee for GSR Workshops and International Workshops on Separation Phenomena in Liquids and Gases (SPLG).

Publications

  • The development of short bowl ultracentrifuges: Final report on contract AT- (40-1) -2400, submitted to Physics Branch, Division of Research, US Atomic Energy Commission, June 15, 1960. Research Laboratories for the Engineering Sciences, University of Virginia , Charlottesville (Virginia) 1960.
  • (with Peter Weidner) The calculation of the critical speeds of multi-link rotors of high-speed machines. Central Office for Nuclear Energy Documentation, Frankfurt am Main 1968.
  • Frenzied furnace pipes in stormy times: an inventor's fate from the history of uranium isotope separation in the hot and cold war of the 20th century. Ekkehard Kubasta, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-200-01372-8 (autobiography).

literature

  • Heinz Barwich , Elfi Barwich: The red atom. As a German scientist in the secret circle of Russian nuclear physics. Scherz, Munich / Bern 1967.
  • Michael Knoll: German nuclear ambitions and Hessian nuclear weapons technology. Centrifuge research at Degussa (1955–1964) , in: Nassauische Annalen , Vol. 125 (2014), pp. 429–446.
  • Max Steenbeck : Impulses and Effects. Steps on my life path. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1977.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Leyendecker: From a German hand - How the gas centrifuge came about. Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 19, 2010, accessed on November 21, 2013 .
  2. ^ "The problem of Uranium Isotope Separation by Means of Ultracentrifuge in the USSR". (PDF; 6.6 MB) Central Intelligence Agency , October 8, 1957, accessed April 4, 2010 .
  3. ↑ Canadian Intellectual Property Office Patent 701733 , English
  4. ↑ Olegh Bukharin Russias Gaseous Centrifuge Technology and Uranium Enrichment Complex , Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson Institute, 2004
  5. ↑ Michael Knoll: German nuclear ambitions and Hessian nuclear weapon design. Centrifuge research at Degussa (1955-1964) , pp. 429-446.
personal data
SURNAME Zippe, Gernot
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist and inventor of a gas centrifuge
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1917
PLACE OF BIRTH Varnsdorf
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 2008
Place of death Munich