Heinz Kaminski

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Heinz Kaminski

Heinz Kaminski (born June 15, 1921 in Bochum ; † February 17, 2002 in Arnsberg ) was a German chemical engineer and space researcher. Kaminski was one of the first to receive signals from the first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik , outside of Soviet territory . In 1946 he founded the Bochum observatory , also referred to as "Kap Kaminski" by the Bochumers in allusion to Cape Canaveral .

Life

Heinz Kaminski comes from an East Prussian mining family. He was a chemical engineer by profession and served as a naval radio operator during World War II . He founded and later headed the Bochum observatory . Kaminski was also engaged in environmental research . Although Kaminski was not a specialist astronomer, he was frequently asked about astronomical events by the media. In 1972 Kaminski became an honorary professor (didactics of physics ) in the physics department at the University of Essen and held lectures until the 1999/2000 winter semester, on the subject of "Satellite Environmental Research - Results and Political Consequences".

Heinz Kaminski was a long-time member of the SPD before he co-founded the Green Action Future party in 1978 and co-founded the Citizens' Party in 1979 . Kaminski died on February 17, 2002 at the age of 80; he had three children.

Bochum observatory

The Hallicrafters - radio receiver has received the Heinz Kaminski was the first Western scientists in Bochum the signals of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1

In 1946, Heinz Kaminski founded the Bochum observatory as a public observatory of the adult education center.

In the basement of his house he built a radio receiving station on old wooden tables and on the meadow in front of his house in Bochum in the Sundern district he and three colleagues built an antenna that he used to listen to radio signals from space.

On the night of October 5, 1957, Kaminski finally succeeded as one of the first outside of Soviet territory to receive the signals from Sputnik 1 , the first artificial satellite in space. The tape recordings from Bochum were proof of the beginning of space travel . Heinz Kaminski was a radio amateur with the callsign DJ5YM.

In 1961 Kaminski took over the management of the Bochum public observatory, which has since been called the Institute for Satellite and Space Research . Over the years he expanded the facility around the public observatory and made it into international space research. Finally, with the Bochum station, signals from a large number of spacecraft from the Sputniks, Luniks via Wostok and Woschod, and in 1963, for the first time in Europe, satellite images from the US weather satellite TIROS -8 could be received.

At the instigation of Kaminski, the city of Bochum built the first post-war large - scale planetarium in Germany in 1964 (equipped at that time with a Zeiss Mod. IV). Kaminski was appointed director and held this position until his retirement in 1986.

In 1967 he installed a 20-meter parabolic antenna in a radome with which all Apollo missions were tracked. When the subsidies from his institute were canceled in 1982, Kaminski converted the Volkssternwarte Bochum into the private "Institute for Environmental and Future Research" (IUZ), which over the decades has developed into a high-ranking educational institution.

Honors

Kaminski was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia on May 13, 1996 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Figure: Heinz Kaminski in the Sputnik room of the Bochum public observatory
  2. ↑ Foreign Radio Amateur Callbook Magazine. Volume 40, No. 4, Radio Amateur Callbook, Chicago 1962, p. 25.
  3. ↑ Merit holders since 1986. State Chancellery of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, accessed on March 11, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Kaminski, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German chemical engineer and space researcher
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1921
PLACE OF BIRTH Bochum
DATE OF DEATH February 17, 2002
Place of death Arnsberg