Heinz Bittel

Heinz Bittel (born March 8, 1910 in Heidenheim an der Brenz , † February 10, 1980 in Münster ) was a German physicist .

overview

Bittel knew ferromagnetic, ferrimagnetic and ferroelectric materials research from the ground up and promoted it sustainably. He mastered measurement technology far beyond these areas and was an internationally recognized expert on the phenomenon of noise . Industrial activity during the war and five years of international experience after the war, he successfully contributed to the science administration in Münster as well as in North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond. His participation in high national and international bodies was often requested. The Swabian maintained an exchange with France for the benefit of science as well as the university and city of Münster. Bittel was rector of the University of Münster, multiple honorary doctorates and received other important awards.

Life and work with the person Heinz Bittel in his institute in Münster are sensitively conveyed by his students Horst E. Müser and Karl-August Hempel .

The different dispositions and interests of Heinz and his older brother, who later became a prehistorian, Kurt Bittel , were encouraged by parents and grandparents at an early age; both made their respective findings public as school students in exhibitions and lectures.

Training as a physicist

After graduating from the Heidenheim Hellenstein Gymnasium in 1929, Heinz Bittel began studying physics and mathematics at the University of Tübingen under Walther Gerlach , who accepted a position at the Physics Institute of the University of Munich in the 1930 summer semester. Bittel followed him; Arnold Sommerfeld and Constantin Carathéodory are named as his other teachers . Gerlach stopped him from changing his place of study to Göttingen by offering him a doctoral thesis; he assumed deviations from the additivity law of the refractive index of a gas mixture due to interaction between the molecules. Bittel received his doctorate in 1935 . The quantitatively accurate mixing of the gases posed a particular challenge. With the Michelson interferometer under observation with photocells, no significant influence was observed.

Given the accuracy it had already achieved, the field of research did not appear promising enough; Bittel switched to solid state physics and researched the ferromagnetism of nickel . Spontaneous polarization and electrical resistance at the Curie point , reversible and irreversible processes in the event of a thermal change in state, and behavior after cold working and heat treatment of as pure nickel as possible (1938) are the issues.
In 1938 he completed his habilitation in Munich, and in 1939 he was appointed lecturer. Shortly before (1937) Bittel had met the time-related requirements for a university career; he enjoyed no further privilege, and a personal commitment to National Socialism cannot be inferred from this. At the end of August 1939, before the campaign against Poland began, Bittel was drafted into the horse artillery.

Research and development as an industrial physicist

From the beginning of 1940, at Gerlach's insistence, Bittel initially participated in research for the Navy, to which the leading magnetists had been committed. For this task he was dismissed from the army at the request of the Commander in Chief of the Navy . In September 1941 Bittel became department head at Askania-Werke AG , Berlin-Friedenau, on leave of absence from the University of Munich; towards the end of the war Bittel became an extraordinary professor . After lectures in Schleswig in the summer of 1945 , cf. University of Kiel , the stagnating development there and the construction of an engineering office of Askania in Immenstaad on Lake Constance , which the Allied Control Council in Berlin prevented from May 1946 , see also Bodenseewerk , Bittel worked in Saint-Raphaël (Var) in the service of the Navy national as head from 1946 a laboratory with two dozen German employees on electro-acoustic developments and signal processing for localization in sea water.

Most recently, there was contact with researchers and institutes in France, particularly in the magnetic field and signal processing.

Academic activity

professorship

Heinz Bittel became a professor at the University of Münster in 1951 as founding director of the Institute for Applied Physics . In the then sparsely occupied university landscape of the newly formed state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the branch, initially called Technical Physics, should be available in Westphalia near the eastern Ruhr area . The state of North Rhine-Westphalia initially planned a new building for the physics institute, but this was delayed by fifteen or almost thirty years. The institute was able to gradually gain space in the former Prussian Higher Presidium on Schlossplatz, which was built in 1903 , before the Natural Science Center at Coesfelder Kreuz took shape in autumn 1966 with the move into the new Institute for Applied Physics .

• Reminder: But the time to "beackernde landscape" handed on as to the of the University of Muenster with speakers supported college days or university weeks is recognizable. Bittel, for example, traveled the area from Hagen in the south to Emden and Oldenburg and Mönchen-Gladbach to Minden and Detmold. These lecture series with a wide range of topics reached wider circles of the population at a time when it was difficult to participate in science and culture through extensive press reports .

Research and Teaching

At his chair, Bittel worked on the research areas of noise , including current noise , cf. Heat noise , electrical conduction mechanism in thin metal wires and changes in magnetic resistance in extremely thin nickel wires, piezo and ferroelectrics in components and the latter as examples of solids with phase transformation and polarization fluctuations at the point of transition, ferrimagnetic resonance , cf. Ferrimagnetism , nonlinear magnetization processes and the Barkhausen effect , as well as flux transport noise in superconductors of type II . Finally, stress optics are mentioned as an example of research desired by industry. In addition to suggesting or taking up these topics, Bittel himself revived some of his pre-war questions, worked on basic concepts of physics as models and worked on the latest concepts such as laser beams and holography .

With ferroelectrics , ferrimagnetic resonance and superconductivity , three research areas left the Institute for Applied Physics when they became the nucleus for the chairs of four of his students outside of Münster.

The particular clarity in the layout and presentation of his lectures with memorable formulations made it easier for the students to process the salary and won them over as employees. Far beyond the research areas, Bittel had physical topics presented in the house colloquium, whereby his explanations were often more illuminating than those presented by the presented publication. This event granted particularly favorable broad education, which his students successfully implemented in industry, research institutes, administration or as lecturers at universities of applied sciences and - it was particularly beneficial for the many students aiming for state exams. Striving to shorten the duration of training was Bittel's early goal.

When the university received the first Zuse Z22 electronic computing system in 1958 , Bittel was happy to include it in his institute. The tube-equipped system was exchanged for the transistorized Z23 in 1962 ; In 1966 it went to the Institute for Numerical and Instrumental Mathematics, founded in 1964 .

For the Institute of Applied Physics, Bittel achieved a second professorship, which was filled in 1967 by Wilfried Hampe, with the addition of the spectrum of magnetic permeability and research areas in semiconductor physics .

Heinz Bittel retired in 1976 .

Appointments and honors

Bittel were offered the highest management positions in industry and state science administration in national and international positions; True to his very special skills as a teacher (Gerlach 1951), however, he only took positions in and outside of Münster close to academic research and teaching, including membership of the administrative board of the Jülich nuclear research facility (1954-1959) and the founding committee of the Ruhr University in Bochum (1961–1966) may be mentioned.

With Eugen Kappler and Wilhelm Klemm , he was one of the leading personalities who acted for the realization of the Natural Science Center of the University of Münster on the Coesfelder Kreuz. Heinz Bittel was rector of the University of Münster in the academic year 1963/64. Maintaining connections with research institutes and universities in France was a particular concern of his. Heinz Bittel was an honorary doctor of the University of Lille and the University of Orléans -Tour. The city of Lille honored him with their silver medal . His continued interest in French culture was recognized by his appointment as Officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques in 1972 .

Heinz Bittel was elected a full member of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften in 1973.

Fonts (selection)

• with Leo Storm: noise. An introduction to understanding electrical fluctuations. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Springer 1971, ISBN 3-540-05055-8 .
• Of natural and artificial magnets. The importance of atomic order states for magnetism. Münster, Aschendorff 1974. (Speech at the ceremonial takeover of the rector's office on November 15, 1963).

literature

• Gerhard Schweier: Well-known Heidenheimers. Heidenheim 1968. Vol. 1, p. 16.
• Horst E. Müser: Heinz Bittel †. In: Physikalische Blätter 36 (1980) pp. 357-358.
• Heinz Bittel. Academic memorial ceremony. Writings of the Society for the Promotion of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster. Münster, Aschendorff 1982, issue 69.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinz Bittel in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Horst E. Müser: Heinz Bittel †. In: Physikalische Blätter 36 (1980) 357-358.
2. ↑ ^{a b} Karl August Hempel: A student's review. In: Heinz Bittel. Academic memorial ceremony. Writings of the Society for the Promotion of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität zu Münster. Münster, Aschendorff 1982, issue 69.
3. ↑ Achim Weiguny: The physics at the University of Münster in the area of ​​tension of National Socialism. In: Hans-Ulrich Thamer , Daniel Droste and Sabine Happ (eds.), The University of Münster in National Socialism. Continuities and breaks between 1920 and 1960 , Münster: Aschendorff 2012, vol. 2, pp. 847 ff. And 864.
4. ↑ Bittel's exchange of ideas with Walther Gerlach from that time until his death, 1979, is reflected in several dozen friendly letters from Gerlach in the Heinz Bittel estate (University of Münster archive, UAMs, order 314).
5. ↑ Eberhard Rössler: The torpedoes of the German submarines. Hamburg, Berlin, Bonn, Mittler & Sohn 2005, pp. 84, 100, 233.
6. ^ Helmut Maier: Research as a weapon. A balance sheet of arms research and the KWG in the Nazi system. 2 volumes, Göttingen, Wallstein 2007, here volume 2.
7. ^ Heinz Bittel estate in the university archive of the Westphalian Wilhelms University of Münster , inventory 314.

predecessor	Office	successor
Joachim Ritter	Rector of the University of Münster 1963–1964	Heinz-Dietrich Wendland