Gustav Heinzmann

Gustav Heinzmann (born March 22, 1920 in Frankfurt am Main ; † July 22, 2006 there ) was a German physicist and inventor.

Life

Gustav Heinzmann was born as the son of a Black Forest wood sculptor in the Frankfurt district of Seckbach . His birth was difficult, so he remained an only child. After attending the Zentgrafenschule , the elementary school teacher advised attending a higher school. In 1930 he therefore switched to the Bornheimer Mittelschule (in Germany until 1964 name for: Realschule ). As a fourteen-year-old he took part in a school competition. His work on the subject of "City and Country, Hand in Hand" was rated as the best in the State of Hesse and the second best in the whole of the German Empire , which is why he was awarded 2nd prize in Berlin . In middle school it turned out that he had a knack for physics. His parents therefore made it possible for him to switch to the Helmholtz secondary school for boys in Frankfurt's Ostend , which emphasized the natural science branch in line with its namesake. There he met his new classmate, Heinz-Herbert Karry , among others , who left school after completing secondary school. Heinzmann stayed and later graduated from high school . His high school diploma showed “very good” in physics. After leaving school, he stayed in contact with Heinz-Herbert Karry - until his murder - and the other classmates and organized meetings for his class “HOR Sexta 1930”. In order to maintain contacts, he joined the Association of Former Helmholtz Students (VEH), which had existed since 1925.

From 1938 to 1940 he did an internship at the Max Braun radio factory in Frankfurt am Main. 1940 followed a short period of military service , after which he studied physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt until 1943 . After the supervisor of his diploma thesis , the experimental physicist Wolfgang Finkelnburg , was appointed full professor at the University of Strasbourg , Heinzmann was given a position as a scientific assistant. He passed his main diploma examination at the University of Strasbourg "with distinction". The topic of his diploma thesis was: "The anode case of the free-burning carbon arc".

Due to the course of the Second World War , the Physics Institute of the University of Strasbourg was relocated to Bopfingen in Württemberg in autumn 1944 and dissolved after the end of the war in summer 1945. Together with a colleague from the institute, he founded his own company, the Phymeg company in Bopfingen. It dealt with the development and repair phy sikalisch- me dizinischer G evices.

In 1947 Fritz Fetzer invited him to an event, the aim of which was to reactivate the association of former Helmholtz students after the war. Heinzmann renewed his membership.

In 1949 he took a job in his former internship company, the Max Braun radio factory in Frankfurt am Main. There he was involved in the development of radio devices as well as measuring and testing devices for production. In 1952, however, he left at his own request because he received an assistant scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) through Friedrich-Wilhelm Gundlach from the TH Darmstadt . This made it possible for him to catch up on his doctorate, which was prevented by the end of the war . From 1952 to 1954 he was a research assistant at the Institute for Telecommunications Equipment and Systems at the TH Darmstadt. In the years that followed, Gundlach and his team developed the electronic analog computer ELRAD, which was later operated by Alwin Walther at the Darmstadt Institute for Practical Mathematics (IPM) (1957).

From 1954 to 1956 he was employed by Hartmann & Braun as head of the laboratory for gas analysis using infrared radiation . From 1956 to 1958 he was head of the Scientific Information Center in the same company.

After Gundlach had changed university, Heinzmann had to warn the TH Darmstadt several times in order to finally get an exam date. In 1958 the time had come. With his practical-mathematical dissertation "The behavior of the triode in the runtime region at high levels of control" he received the academic degree of doctoral engineer (Dr.-Ing.). The subject of his dissertation was the work organization of high-frequency technical calculations, the development of calculation schemes and operational flow diagrams for the calculating machine.

In the same year Heinzmann met his future wife Paula (nee Langes) on a hike to Triberg in the Black Forest. She came from Kleve on the Lower Rhine. In 1959 the two married.

From January 1, 1959, Gustav Heinzmann was a scientific consultant at the Association of German Engineers (VDI) in Düsseldorf , and from January 1, 1961, he became the managing director of the VDI / VDE control engineering group. On June 1, 1968, he moved to Frankfurt am Main, where he took on a position as head of the literature department at the Association of German Electrical Engineers (VDE), where he was responsible for editing the association's own express service and editing monographs and reports on experiences. In addition, he was responsible for the further development of the systematic classification of chemical apparatus and for the preparation of VDE conferences.

During this time, Heinzmann founded the Gesellschaft für Arbeitsmethodik (GfA) in Frankfurt am Main , in which one of his further talents came into play: the philosophical consideration of the meaning of human work and the formulation of a set of rules for cooperative behavior in work and private life. As chairman, he also led seminars, for example on the topic of "Increasing creativity with the holistic method". In 1990 he was made an honorary member of this society.

In his private life, Heinzmann ensured a balanced leisure activity and a distance from his work. In addition to his passion for hiking and cycling , he was active in the 1875 Seckbach singers' association and in the Seckbach cultural and history association. He was committed to the compatibility of Christianity and natural science , campaigned for nature conservation and against the construction of highways in Frankfurt city area as well as against an expansion of the Frankfurt airport . In doing so, he took a decidedly opposite position to his former schoolmate Heinz-Herbert Karry, who, as Hessian Minister for Economic Affairs, vehemently advocated both building measures.

In 1983 Heinzmann retired. He only traveled with his wife within Germany; both of them refused to drive. In the Seckbach district, both had Heinzmann's parents' house from 1875 on Zeuläckerstraße expanded and kept it as a retirement home.

Heinzmann did not take his retirement literally and devoted more time to his scientific research, investing most of his fortune in it. In 2000 he received the patent for the "Circuit arrangement for eliminating interference signals in the received signal of a radio receiver, which emanate from adjacent channels, by means of compensation of the interference signals" and in 2001 the patent for the "Procedure for eliminating interference signals in the received signal of a radio receiver by means of automated interference suppression compensation and circuit arrangement for carrying out the method ”. In a layman's terms and understandable to the point, he simply invented the solution to the so-called "wave salad", the overlapping of different transmission signals and the associated interference during reception.

On February 10, 2005, he suffered a major cerebral haemorrhage that resulted in complete paralysis on the right side of his body. He was no longer able to speak or swallow, so he had to be fed with a gastric tube. His wife looked after him to the end. Gustav Heinzmann died on July 22, 2006.

literature

• Gustav Heinzmann: The behavior of the triode in the transit time area at high levels of modulation . Dissertation. TH Darmstadt June 14, 1958

See also

→ List of former students at the Helmholtz School Frankfurt am Main

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hans Thiel: Obituary for Gustav Heinzmann . In: Association of former Helmholtz students e. V., Frankfurt am Main (Ed.): Information for members . No. 103 , October 2006, p. 3–5 ( vehev.de [PDF; accessed on February 23, 2018]). Obituary for Gustav Heinzmann ( memento from March 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Analog computing machines: Abstract, physical models by Henner Schneider, Department of Computer Science, FH Darmstadt ( Memento from February 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 22 kB) at: fh-darmstadt.de
3. ↑ Christine Krause: The analog computing technology with special consideration of the development of analog computers in Thuringia and Saxony . In: WH Schmidt, W. Girbardt (Hrsg.): Communications on the history of computing technology . No. 6 , 2006, p. 121–133 ( tu-ilmenau.de [PDF; accessed on February 23, 2018]).