Herbert Schlitt

Herbert Schlitt (born June 9, 1929 in Frankfurt - Höchst ; † October 21, 2019 in Erlangen ) was a German physicist and professor of control engineering and a pioneer in the field of stochastic description and design methods for control systems.

Life

Herbert Schlitt was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1929 and grew up here. There he went to school with his Abitur in 1949. He then studied physics until 1954 at the philosophical faculty of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main . Here he received his doctorate in 1955 at the Faculty of Natural Sciences with a dissertation on the subject of "Sensitivity and setting time of gas-filled thermoelectric radiation receivers as a function of gas pressure, gas type and heat capacity of the receivers".

Through a two-year activity as an industrial physicist, he gained practical experience and insights into economic processes. He then worked as an assistant at the Institute for Applied Physics at the University of Frankfurt / Main.

In 1957 he was one of the first scientific assistants to go to the Institute for Automatic Control (IRT) of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen (RWTH). The IRT was one of the first founding institutes for control engineering in the German-speaking area: 1955 at the TH Dresden by Heinrich Kindler , 1957 at the TH Darmstadt by Winfried Oppelt and at the same time at the RWTH Aachen by Otto Schäfer . It was here that he completed his habilitation in the interdisciplinary subject of cybernetics in 1959 .

Schlitt then worked as a private lecturer at the Technical University of Darmstadt and at the Battelle Institute in Frankfurt / Main in the development area of ​​"navigation satellites and control technology" in the field of satellite reception technology.

In 1962 he was appointed professor to the chair for control engineering at the TH Hannover in the faculty for mechanical engineering . Here was one Heinrich rake to his graduate students, who later became a professor and Director of the Institute of Control Engineering at the RWTH Aachen was in the tradition of Otto Schaefer.

As early as 1966, Schlitt accepted a professorship and as head of the Institute for Control Engineering in the Technical Faculty of the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg , which was then in its founding phase. After this change from Schlitt, Manfred Thoma was appointed to the chair for control engineering in Hanover from 1967 . Schlitt headed this institute in Erlangen until his retirement in 1997.

Schlitt's teaching and research activities in the field of stochastic control technology were strongly physically permeated and interdisciplinary oriented towards the technical sciences of his faculty. The chair and the institute for control engineering in Erlangen therefore devoted themselves to theoretical and application-oriented questions. Schlitt promoted an interdisciplinary education among the students through the content of his lectures and the conveyance of his own interdisciplinary approaches, which he was familiar with from his habilitation field cybernetics.

Even after his retirement, Schlitt was still connected to the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. So he initially held an in-depth basic lecture in the electrical engineering course. However, his personal interests were in the history of science , philosophy and music . In his publications, Schlitt's interest therefore turned to interdisciplinary questions from theoretical physics, philosophy and historical lines of development.

He was a corresponding member of the Braunschweig Scientific Society .

Publications (selection)

• System theory for random processes - statistical methods for communication and control technology. Springer Verlag, Berlin; Göttingen; Heidelberg 1960.
• Stochastic processes in linear and non-linear control loops. Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig, Verlag Technik, Berlin 1968.
• Statistical methods of control engineering. Bibliographical Institute, Mannheim; Vienna; Zurich 1972 (with Franz Dittrich).
• Control engineering in process engineering and chemistry - components, control loops, planning and implementation. Vogel Verlag, Würzburg 1978, ISBN 3-8023-0124-2 .
• Control engineering - physically oriented representation of interdisciplinary principles; Modeling, analog and digital control, non-technical control, state control, stochastic processes, Kalman filters. Vogel Verlag Würzburg 1988, 2nd edition 1993, ISBN 3-8023-0171-4 .
• System theory for stochastic processes - statistical basics, system dynamics, Kalman filter. Springer Verlag, Berlin; Heidelberg; New York; London; Paris; Tokyo; Hong Kong; Barcelona; Budapest 1992, ISBN 3-540-54288-4 .

literature

• Otto Schäfer : Basics of the automatic regulation. Technischer Verlag Heinz Resch, Graefelfing 1953, 7th edition 1974.
• Winfried Oppelt : Small manual of technical control processes. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim 1954; Verlag Chemie, Weinheim and Verlag Technik, Berlin, 5th edition 1972.
• Heinrich Kindler : Collection of exercises on control engineering. Verlag Technik, Berlin; Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich; Vienna 1964 (with H. Buchta and H.-H. Wilfert).
• Eduard Pestel , Eckart Kollmann: Fundamentals of control engineering. Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig 1968, 3rd edition Vieweg & Teubner, Wiesbaden 1979, ISBN 978-3-322-96097-9 .
• Manfred Thoma : Theory of linear control systems - with 71 examples and 150 exercises. Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig 1973. ISBN 3-528-04850-6 .
• Karl Reinisch : Cybernetic basics and description of continuous systems . Verlag Technik, Berlin 1974.
• Otto Schäfer and Heinz Bültges: Controls with switching controllers in the event of stochastic disturbances. Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1981, ISBN 3-531-03034-5 .
• Frank Dittmann: On the development of the “general regulatory knowledge” in Germany. Hermann Schmidt and the “Memorandum for the establishment of an institute for control engineering”. In: Wiss. TU Dresden magazine. Vol. 44, No. 6, 1995, pp. 88-94.
• Werner Kriesel , Hans Rohr, Andreas Koch: History and future of measurement and automation technology. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-18-150047-X .
• Association of German Engineers, VDI / VDE-GMA (Ed.): Yearbook 1997 VDI / VDE Society for Measurement and Automation Technology. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1997, ISBN 3-18-401611-0 .
• KH Fasol , R. Lauber; F. Mesch, H. Rake , M. Thoma , H. Töpfer : Great Names and the Early Days of Control in Germany. In: Automation technology, Munich. Vol. 54, No. 9, 2006, pp. 462-472.
• Norbert Gilson, Walter Kaiser: Electricity, energy, information - the history of the faculty for electrical engineering and information technology at RWTH Aachen. In: Volume 6 of Aachen contributions to the history of science and technology in the 20th century. Verlag for the history of natural sciences and technology, Diepholz 2010, p. 201. ISBN 3-9281-8689-2 .
• Werner Kriesel : Future models for computer science, automation and communication. In: Fuchs-Kittowski, Frank; Kriesel, Werner (ed.): Computer science and society. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski . Frankfurt a. M., Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Vienna: Peter Lang Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, PL Academic Research 2016, ISBN 978-3-631-66719-4 (print), E- ISBN 978-3-653 -06277-9 (e-book).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Obituaries. In: Erlanger Nachrichten / Nürnberger Nachrichten. October 26, 2019, accessed November 10, 2019 .