Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer (born November 10, 1910 in Weimar , † May 23, 1975 in Ensenada , Mexico) was a German astronomer and astrophysicist .

Life

Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer was born in Weimar as the son of the publisher Gustav Kiepenheuer . He was initially an assistant at the Göttingen observatory , where he dealt with questions of practical and theoretical solar research . In 1939 he became a civil employee of the Luftwaffe at the Rechlin test site to work on the project of predicting the optimal frequency bands for the military by observing solar activity.

His boss at the time was the radio frequency expert and State Councilor Johannes Plendl . After Plendl rose further in the hierarchy of the Third Reich and became head of the Reich Office for High Frequency Research, he ensured the utmost urgency and the necessary funds with which a rapid development of a chain of solar observatories was possible.

In 1942, Kiepenheuer was commissioned to found the Fraunhofer Institute (today: Kiepenheuer Institute for Solar Physics ) based in Freiburg im Breisgau . This institute was continuously expanded by him and led by him until his death.

During the Second World War , Kiepenheuer worked together with Erich Regener , who in 1934 had already recorded the first spectrograms of the sun outside the main part of the earth's atmosphere with a team of balloons. Both now wanted to record more comprehensive spectrograms with a UV spectrograph at the tip of a V-2 . This project was no longer realized because of the further course of the war.

His development work for the “Spectrostratoscope” project was significant. The device carried by a stratospheric balloon to explore the sun with a Lyot filter and a spectrograph had passed the first successful flight in Palestine, Texas, USA six days before his death. The basis for this work may have been the magnetograph developed by him and Georg Heinrich Thiessen between 1949 and 1951 for measuring solar magnetic fields.

In the context of solar observation there is the "Modified Kiepenheuer Scale" developed by him, which is used to better classify solar images. The main points on this scale relate to calmness and focus.

Publications

  • 1957 Die Sonne Springer Verlag Berlin
  • 1963: The Unlimited Space (together with Fred Hoyle and Herta Siebler-Ferry)

Awards and honors

literature

  • Michael P. Seiler: "Sun god" is a matter of command. History of German solar research in the Third Reich and under Allied occupation. Scientific publishing house Harri Deutsch, Frankfurt a. M. 2007

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed June 27, 2016 .

Web links


personal data
SURNAME Kiepenheuer, Karl-Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Weimar
DATE OF DEATH May 23, 1975
Place of death Ensenada , Mexico