Heinz Billing

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Heinz Billing (2012)

Heinz Billing (born April 7, 1914 in Salzwedel ; † January 4, 2017 in Garching ) was a German physicist and pioneer in the construction of computer systems and data storage devices as well as in the research of gravitational waves .

Live and act

His father Walter Billing was the rector of the girls' elementary school in Salzwedel, co-founded the Liberal Democratic Party of Germany after the Second World War and ruled in Salzwedel as mayor. Billing was one of the first to work in the field of electronic data processing in Germany after the Second World War and who later also devoted himself to researching gravitational waves.

Billing grew up in his parents' house as the son of Helma Billing, née Jaritz (born November 18, 1881 in Hadmersleben ; † May 31, 1955 in Salzwedel) and Walter Billing (born November 25, 1877 in Magdeburg ; † May 6, 1958 in Salzwedel) at the Großer Stegel 55. He skipped the first two school classes. In 1932 he passed his Abitur at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Gymnasium in Salzwedel . He then studied mathematics and physics, the first two semesters in Göttingen and then in Munich . After studying mathematics and physics, he received his doctorate in 1938 in Munich in the field of canal rays with the overall rating “ summa cum laude ” . As part of this work, he carried out the mirror rotation experiment proposed by Albert Einstein in 1922 and later again in 1926, with which the wave-particle dualism could again be experimentally confirmed. Although Emil Rupp had already claimed in 1926 as part of his habilitation thesis to have found this experimental confirmation, it turned out in the 1930s that Rupp had falsified his experimental data .

On October 3, 1943, Billing married Anneliese Oetker (* July 8, 1921 in Salzwedel; † December 31, 2008 in Garching near Munich ) in Salzwedel. From this marriage three children were born, Heiner Erhard Billing (born November 18, 1944 in Göttingen), Dorit Gerda Gronefeld b. Billing (born June 27, 1946 in Göttingen) and Arend Gerd Billing (born September 19, 1954 in Göttingen).

After his ten-semester studies, Heinz Billing applied to the Aerodynamic Research Institute (AVA) in Göttingen in order to avoid military service with this work, like his father once did. His father did not become a soldier in World War I and was able to stay with the family. In November 1938, Heinz Billing was called up for military service after all, to a spotlight regiment in Wolfenbüttel . In early 1941, however, it was surprisingly placed as UK (= indispensable). This was achieved by his former director Hans Georg Küssner (1900–1984) from the AVA in Göttingen. He was able to evade active military service and devote himself to his professional task.

Heinz Billing (left) with Konrad Zuse at Systems '91

After the Second World War he researched and worked at the Institute for Instrument Science in the Max Planck Society , which was located on the AVA site in Göttingen and where he developed a magnetic drum memory and program-controlled calculating machines in 1948 . Billing mainly used amplifier tubes for this . During this time he learned about the new type of electronic computer ENIAC in the USA and its performance. In 1947 there was an exchange with high-ranking English scientists and computer experts from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington . a. John Roland Womersley (1907-1958), Arthur Porter and Alan Turing were involved. In the form of a colloquium, the British experts questioned German scientists such as Heinz Billing, Konrad Zuse , Alwin Walther and Helmut Schreyer . Billing was confronted with the idea of binary numbers and data storage for the first time . In contrast to the English who worked with acoustic memories, from 1948 Billing used magnetic tapes that were intended for music recordings and glued to a rotating drum to store numbers.

After a nine-month stay at the University of Sydney , Werner Heisenberg brought him to the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Göttingen, where he developed the first G1 electronic computer (Göttingen 1) for the astronomer Ludwig Biermann in 1952 . The computer could perform two operations per second and had a drum memory for 26 words with 32 bits each . Later he designed the successor model G2 , the planning of which began before the completion of the G1, and developed the model G3 , which was in operation from 1960 to 1972. On all three computers, the input was made as decimal numbers using a converted typewriter , the computer translated these inputs into binary numbers and output the result again in decimal numbers. Later, punched tapes were used. The main memory of the G3 model was a magnetic core memory with a cycle time of 10 μs, which consisted of 4096 words of 42 bits each.

G3

The Max Planck Institute was relocated to Munich in 1958 and renamed the “Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics”, and the Astrophysics department was established in Garching near Munich in 1979 as an independent Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics . Billing went with them and in 1961 was appointed "Scientific Member" of the Max Planck Society. Billing was appointed honorary professor for computer science at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg on July 26, 1967 . In 1968 Billing became chairman of the newly established Advisory Committee for Computing Systems in the Max Planck Society (BAR). He remained so until 1986 and was a member of the committee until 1998.

In 1993 the Heinz Billing Prize for the Promotion of Scientific Computing was awarded by the Heinz Billing Association for the Promotion of Scientific Computing e. V. , an association founded within the Max Planck Society (MPG), under the motto "EDP as a tool of science". The prize is endowed with 5,000 euros and is awarded every two years. It is intended to recognize the achievements of those who, in time-consuming and creative work, develop the necessary hardware and software that are indispensable for new advances in science. Since 2006, the award has been made by the Board of Trustees of the Heinz Billing Foundation of the Max Planck Society, to which Billing also belonged.

As a hardware specialist for computer storage, as a scientific member of the Max Planck Institute appointed in 1961, as an appointed honorary professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg since 1967, as the scientific head of the technical committee for conferences of industry and universities, as a co-founder and long-term employee of the specialist journal " Electronic computer systems "and as a co-initiator for the creation of uniform terms, uniform textbooks for:" Computer "and" Informatics "as well as accompanying the Munich trade fair company at exhibitions and international congresses on microelectronics, Billing also did everything in his power to remove the decisive obstacle to keep pace with the world on a global scale.

Since 1970, Billing's scientific focus has been the research of gravitational waves (ripples in space-time). He constructed a series of laser antennas to be able to detect these waves. In this interferometric methods used. Billing came to gravitational physics when he tried to reproduce the measurements of gravitational waves as claimed by the American physicist Joseph Weber in the early 1970s . Billing and his team repeated the measurement with true-to-size replicas and, together with a similar cylinder project in Frascati, carried out the longest and most sensitive coincidence measurement at the time. Weber's measurements were clearly refuted. In 1975 Billing took up the suggestion of the later Nobel Prize winner Rainer Weiss from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to use laser interferometers for the measurement of gravitational waves. From 1980 Billing had such a device built in Garching near Munich with an arm length of 30 meters. Without this prototype and the knowledge gained from it, the LIGO project would certainly not have come about at that time, confirmed Rainer Weiss in 2013. Billing's retirement in 1982 was not the end of his influence on the work on gravitational waves. In particular, the successful experiments he started and the sensitivities achieved in the early 1980s led to the first proposal for the construction of a German gravitational wave detector with an arm's length of three kilometers. In the mid-1990s, the construction of gravitational wave detectors finally began in Germany (GEO600), the USA (LIGO), Italy (Virgo) and Japan (TAMA). The German-British GEO collaboration is now a world leader in the development of new detector technology. For example, the laser systems developed for GEO600 are among the core components of the next generation of US LIGO detectors.

A few weeks before his 100th birthday, news came that gravitational waves may have been detected by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). But that later turned out to be a mistake. Billing's greatest wish of his long life as a researcher did not come true until the age of 101 as the culmination of his life's work - the first direct measurement of gravitational waves by researchers at LIGO , the detector facility in the USA, on September 14, 2015. “I will stay alive until they found these gravitational waves, ”he once said to a former Munich colleague. It actually worked. For the direct detection of these gravitational waves, the researchers Rainer Weiss , Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne from the LIGO detector received the Nobel Prize in Physics on October 3, 2017 . Billing also played a major role in this.

“As a German computer pioneer, Billing must not only be mentioned in the same breath as Konrad Zuse, he has also been intensively involved in researching gravitational waves since the early 1970s. In any case, Heinz Billing was both a computer pioneer and a gravitational wave pioneer. His contributions to computers are certainly comparable to those of Konrad Zuse. Without his work, projects such as the British-German gravitational wave detector near Hanover ( GEO600 ) and the US laser interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory ( LIGO ) would not have been possible, ”emphasized Karsten Danzmann , Director at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics ( Albert Einstein Institute) and professor at the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz University of Hanover on the occasion of Billing's 100th birthday in 2014.

After the Salzwedeler Mark Bluhm (CDU) had written several reports about Billing in 2008/2009 and suggested it for any honors of the city of Salzwedel up to honorary citizenship, the FDP city council group applied in 2013 to make Billing an honorary citizen of his birthplace Salzwedel. At the meeting of the city council on June 12, 2013 it was decided to give Billing honorary citizenship. The award of the honorary citizenship took place during a ceremony in Salzwedel on August 9, 2013, at which Billing was also allowed to enter himself in the Golden Book of the city of Salzwedel. In addition, he was made an honorary member of the Association of Alumni of the Jahn Gymnasium in Salzwedel.

At the suggestion and initiative of Mark Bluhm, Billing was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2015 . Federal President Joachim Gauck had followed the recommendation of the Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer on the basis of Bluhm's suggestion and had approved the award with a certificate dated May 27, 2015. The Order of Merit was presented to him for health reasons in his home in Garching on October 8, 2015 by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Free State of Bavaria and Bavarian State Minister for Economics and Media, Energy and Technology , Ilse Aigner , during a festive ceremony.

On September 29, 2016, Billing was awarded the golden medal of merit of the university town of Garching by the mayor Dietmar Gruchmann, of which he was the oldest citizen.

Billing lived in Garching for more than 40 years until his death. He died there in January 2017 at the age of 102.

Awards and honors

  • Admission to the Wall of Fame at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum (HNF) in Paderborn , the largest computer museum in the world
  • 1987 Konrad Zuse Medal for his services to computer science, especially for the development of the magnetic drum storage system. Billing was the first to receive the Konrad Zuse Medal.
  • 2006 Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art . The Maximilian Order is awarded in recognition of outstanding achievements in the fields of science and art and is a particularly high state honor and the highest distinction of the Free State of Bavaria .
  • 2013 Award of honorary citizenship of the Hanseatic City of Salzwedel
  • 2015 Federal Cross of Merit 1st class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
  • 2016 Gold Medal of Merit from the university town of Garching b. Munich

Publications

  • Heinz Billing: An interference experiment with the light of a canal beam. JA Barth, Leipzig 1938.
  • Heinz Billing, Wilhelm Hopmann: Microprogram control unit. In: Electronic Rundschau. Issue 10, 1955.
  • Heinz Billing, Albrecht Rüdiger: The Parametron promises new possibilities in calculating machine construction. In: eR - electronic computing systems. Volume 1, Issue 3, 1959.
  • Heinz Billing: Learning machines. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1961.
  • Heinz Billing: The computer system G3 developed at the MPI for Physics and Astrophysics. In: eR - electronic computing systems. Volume 5, Issue 2, 1961.
  • Heinz Billing: Magnetic step layers as storage elements. In: eR - electronic computing systems. Volume 5, Issue 6, 1963.
  • Heinz Billing: Fast computing machine memories and their speed and capacity limits. In: eR - electronic computing systems. Volume 5, Issue 2, 1963.
  • Heinz Billing, Albrecht Rüdiger, Roland Schilling: BRUSH - A special computer for lane recognition and tracking in bladder chamber images. In: eR - electronic computing systems. Volume 11, Issue 3, 1969.
  • Heinz Billing: On the history of the development of digital storage. In: eR - electronic computing systems. Volume 19, Issue 5, 1977.
  • Heinz Billing: A wide-band laser interferometer for the detection of gravitational radiation. progress report, Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, Munich 1979.
  • Heinz Billing: The Göttingen calculating machines G1, G2, G3. In: Development tendencies of scientific data centers, colloquium, Göttingen. Springer, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-540-10491-7 .
  • Heinz Billing: The Munich gravitational wave detector using laser interferometry. Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, Munich 1982.
  • Heinz Billing: The Göttingen calculating machines G1, G2 and G3. In: MPG-Spiegel. 4, 1982.
  • Heinz Billing: My memories. Self-published, 1994.
  • Heinz Billing: A life between research and practice. Self-published by F. Genscher, Düsseldorf 1997.
  • Heinz Billing: Fast memories for computers and their limitations regarding speed and capacity (fast calculating machine memories and their speed and capacity limits). In: IT - Information Technology. Volume 50, Issue 5, 2008.

Literature and articles

Web links

Commons : Heinz Billing  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Professor Heinz Billing has died: developer of the G1 electronic computer ( memento from January 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR), January 8, 2017
  2. ^ Emil Rupp, Albert Einstein and the Canal Ray Experiments on Wave-Particle Duality: Scientific Fraud and Theoretical Bias
  3. ↑ Küssner, Hans Georg in the German biography
  4. ↑ Thomas Bührke: Flying without Flutter (PDF; 2.9 MB) In: DLR Nachrichten. No. 117, German Aerospace Center e. V. (DLR), pp. 44-49.
  5. ↑ Properties of the G3 computer ( Memento of the original from July 23, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gwdg.de
  6. ↑ In 1982 he retired. See Kazemi / Henning: Chronicle of the KWG and MPG, Berlin 2011, page 960.
  7. ↑ Ernst von Biron, Reinhard Hennings: The history of the BAR. Documentation on the occasion of the 200th meeting of the SFA on November 30, 2001 (PDF; 670 kB), pp. 81–124.
  8. ^ Heinz Billing Prize for the Promotion of Scientific Computing
  9. ↑ Gravitational wave detector Garching ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / priorwww.aei.mpg.de
  10. ↑ Manfred Lindinger: Hunt for Einstein's waves. The search for gravitational waves took almost 60 years. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) Wissen, February 19, 2016.
  11. ↑ Benjamin Knispel, Susanne Milde: Pioneer of computing machines and gravitational wave astronomy: Heinz Billing on his 100th birthday In: Press and research reports, Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, AEI Hanover, April 7, 2014
  12. ↑ Bruce Allen, Alessandra Buonanno, Karsten Danzmann, Hermann Nicolai and Bernard Schutz: Prof. Dr. Heinz Billing died on January 4th, 2017 at the age of 102: The AEI mourns the loss of the pioneer of gravitational wave astronomy In: Press and research releases, obituary Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, AEI Hannover u. AEI Potsdam, January 7, 2017
  13. ↑ Martin Holland: Big Bang: First direct evidence for cosmological inflation. In: heise.de. March 17, 2014, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  14. ↑ Alina Schadwink: Gravitational waves: The sensational find has crumbled into dust. In: zeit.de . February 2, 2015, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Dagny Lüdemann: Albert Einstein: The gravitational waves are proven. In: zeit.de . February 11, 2016, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Thomas Bührke: Physics sensation: Successful detection of gravitational waves for the first time. In: welt.de . February 11, 2016, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Sven Stockrahm and Dagny Lüdemann: Nobel Prize in Physics goes to the discoverer of gravitational waves In: Die Zeit, October 3, 2017
  18. ↑ Nobel Prize in Physics for Gravitational Wave Researchers In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, October 3, 2017
  19. ↑ Nobel Prize in Physics goes to gravitational wave researcher In: Spiegel, October 3, 2017
  20. ↑ Nobel Prize in Physics goes to gravitational wave researcher In: Forschungsmmeldung, Max Planck Society, October 3, 2017
  21. ↑ Manfred Lindinger: Now you finally find Einstein's mysterious effect: On the death of the computer pioneer and father of gravitational wave research Heinz Billing In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 11, 2017, p. 12.
personal data
SURNAME Billing, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist, pioneer in the construction of computer systems and data storage devices
DATE OF BIRTH April 7, 1914
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzwedel
DATE OF DEATH 4th January 2017
Place of death Garching