Karlheinz Meier

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Karlheinz Meier, lecture at a summer school in Obergurgl (Austria), August 2015

Karlheinz Meier (born May 4, 1955 in Hamburg ; † October 24, 2018 in Heidelberg ) was a German physicist and professor of experimental physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . Together with the neuroscientist Henry Markram and the physician Richard Frackowiak, he initiated the Human Brain Project funded by the European Commission .

biography

After graduating from high school in Süderelbe in Hamburg , Meier studied physics at the University of Hamburg from 1975 to 1981 and received his doctorate there in 1984 with an experimental work carried out at DESY . From 1984 to 1986 he was a Research Fellow and then from 1986 to 1990 Scientific Staff at the European Research Center CERN in Geneva . In 1990 he returned to DESY as a scientist before accepting a professorship for experimental physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 1992. From 2011 to 2015 he was invited professor at EPFL in Lausanne . Meier was married and had two children.

research

Meier worked in the field of experimental elementary particle physics from 1981 to 2012 . From 2005 he reoriented his scientific work and increasingly turned to the conception and construction of new computer architectures based on the model of the brain.

Meier carried out his work in elementary particle physics at the European accelerator laboratories DESY and CERN. The focus of his work was on the experimental investigation of the strong interaction and the physical instrumentation in particle detectors. From 1984 to 1990 he worked on the first proof of the direct decay of the W and Z bosons in particle jets. For the ATLAS experiment at the LHC , he and his group designed and built an electronic trigger system for fast data selection. Further contributions to instrumentation were in the field of calorimetry in experiments in elementary particle physics.

From around 2005 Meier turned to a new area of ​​research. Based on his experience in building trigger systems for elementary particle physics, he and his Heidelberg working group developed and built neuromorphic computer systems . Such systems are physical replicas of neural networks in biology and are built using microelectronic circuits. In contrast to today's technical implementations of program- controlled Turing machines , neuromorphic systems are very energy-efficient, fault-tolerant and capable of learning. The previous work was carried out in two European research projects initiated by Meier, FACETS and BrainScaleS. In 2010 Meier and the neuroscientist Henry Markram initiated the European research flagship Human Brain Project (HBP) , in which the development of large neuromorphic systems with the integration of neurobiological data and the simulation of neural circuits on supercomputers is systematically coordinated and coordinated. The project started work in October 2013. In March 2016, Meier's group in Heidelberg completed a neuromorphic computer with four million electronic neurons and one billion synapses and opened it to the public.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the European Institute for Neuromorphic Computing (EINC) initiated by Meier took place on May 5, 2017.

Awards

Karlheinz Meier was the second national winner in 1974 in the Jugend forscht competition in physics. In 2001 he was awarded the teaching award of the state of Baden-Württemberg . In 2016 he was elected a Fellow of the European Physical Society . In 2018 he was posthumously awarded the Lautenschläger Research Prize.

public relation

Meier was the author and actor of around 70 short films in which physical phenomena are presented and explained for laypeople. The films were made in the “Team One and a Half” series initiated by Campus TV in the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region , in which 90 seconds are available for the presentation of a physical topic. All films follow a consistent concept: In addition to the experimental presentation of a physical issue, each film contains a short portrait of a physicist and a current reference to modern technology. The films are available on a YouTube channel. The number of views of the channel exceeded the million mark at the beginning of 2016.

Science management

Karlheinz Meier was the founder of the Heidelberg ASIC laboratory for microelectronics in 1994 . Together with Siegfried Hunklinger , he founded the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in 1999 . From 2001 to 2004 he was Vice-Rector at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, from 2007 to 2009 President of the European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) and from 2009 to 2013 on the board of the German Physical Society, responsible for external relations. From 2010 he was chairman of the board of trustees of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy .

Web links

credentials

  1. ^ Obituary on the main page of the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics. Archived from the original on October 26, 2018 ; accessed on October 25, 2018 .
  2. ↑ A stepping stone for a career in research. In: WELT online, www.welt.de. May 14, 2006, accessed December 12, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Experiments and publications by Meier in particle physics on INSPIRE
  4. ↑ Website of the FACETS project
  5. ↑ Website of the BrainScaleS project
  6. ↑ Website of the Human Brain Project
  7. ↑ EPFL press release on the Human Brain Project from October 7, 2013
  8. ^ Press release from Heidelberg University of March 16, 2016
  9. ↑ Heidelberg University press release on the EINC dated May 5, 2017
  10. ↑ YouTube channel uniheidelbergphysik
personal data
SURNAME Meier, Karlheinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German experimental physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4th 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 2018
Place of death Heidelberg