Konrad Beyerle (engineer)

Konrad Karl Matthias Beyerle (born February 16, 1900 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † February 17, 1979 in Singen (Hohentwiel) or in Überlingen ) was a German engineer and developer of a gas centrifuge .

Life

As the son of the private lecturer (1899) or professor (1900) of law at the Albert-Ludwigs-University , Konrad Beyerle and his wife Bertha, born. Riedle was born in Freiburg, Konrad Beyerle grew up in line with his father's appointments in Breslau (from 1902), Göttingen (1905), Bonn (1917) and finally Munich (1918). From 1919 he attended the Technical University there , where he completed a degree in electrical engineering , which he graduated as a Dipl.-Ing. completed. Since 1918 he was a member of the Catholic student association KDStV Aenania Munich . Konrad Beyerle then moved to RWTH Aachen , where he assisted from 1927 to 1929 and in 1929 became Dr.-Ing. PhD . In the same year he joined AEG in Berlin as a development engineer , of which he was a member until 1934. In 1934 the Catholic Konrad Beyerle married Annemarie, b. Bender , with whom he had two children. His daughter is Maria-Elisabeth Michel-Beyerle . Beyerle moved from AEG to the Kiel- based company Anschütz & Co , whose development department he headed from 1943 to 1946. As a direct consequence, he became the first and only head of the " Institute for Instrument Science " of the Max Planck Society in Göttingen until 1957, and in the course of its dissolution via the "Society for the Promotion of Nuclear Physics Research" until 1965, head of the "Central Institute for Scientific" Apparate ”at the Jülich nuclear research facility , which was renamed the“ Society for the Promotion of Nuclear Physics Research ”in 1960. When he retired, he settled as a consulting engineer in Aachen , where he had lived since moving to Jülich . Konrad Beyerle, who registered numerous patents , developed a gas centrifuge suitable for continuous operation for isotope separation .

Third Reich

During the time of National Socialism, Konrad Beyerle worked as head of the development department of the gyrocompass manufacturer "Anschütz & Co." in the development of armaments technologies. On August 5, 1941, Wilhelm Groth (1904–1977) - who, like Beyerle, had studied at the TH Munich (1922–1927) - was looking for a designer who was able to build a suitable centrifuge based on his ideas , Contact Beyerle. The development and manufacture of ultracentrifuges (UZ) for uranium enrichment was part of the program to produce a “decisive weapon of war”, the atomic bomb . Based on Beyerle's construction plans (submitted on October 22, 1941), the first successful tests were carried out on August 7 and 11, 1942, before the tests with the multi-chamber centrifuge were resumed on September 10, 1943 after a long series of tests. After all, the UZ was in continuous operation from 1944.

Already after the heavy air raids on Hamburg in July 1943 , Paul Harteck , as head of the ultracentrifuge project, decided to relocate isotope separation to Freiburg, with Beyerle from there possibly providing the idea. After the destruction of the facilities of the company Anschütz in Kiel in July 1944, Harteck and Beyerle finally decided to build the further developed double centrifuge UZ III B in a building under the code name "Angora farm" in Kandern , south of Freiburg im Breisgau. For this purpose, Beyerle visited the premises there from August 2 to 13, 1944. The total of ten centrifuges in production were to be operated in the research center in Kandern set up by the Reich Research Council under the code name “Vollmers Möbelfabrik”. The rapid collapse of the western front forced a change in plans for Freiburg in August / September 1944. On September 9, 1944, Beyerle suggested Harteck Schloss Plön as the new location for continuing the isotope tests with the UZ 1 and UZ III A centrifuges, but ultimately the decision was made in favor of Celle (Seidenwerk Spinnhütte). For safety reasons, however, only the UZ III A was built there. In November 1944, the UZ III A could be re-assembled in Celle and operations were resumed at the beginning of February 1945, with up to 50 grams of uranium enriched by 15% being produced per day . However, on March 12, 1945, an explosion caused severe damage to the centrifuge. The approach of the British troops finally stopped production on April 12, 1945. The enriched uranium that had been extracted until then remained lost. A second ultracentrifuge, as well as the components for the others, which required production on a larger scale, had been moved to an unknown location, but also remained undetectable after the end of the war.

After 1945

In 1946, Beyerle received an order from the British occupation authorities to build two centrifuges that were not completed during the war until they were ready for production. In connection with this order, Great Britain had urged the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science , from 1948 Max Planck Society, to establish the Göttingen Max Planck Institute for Instrumentation by Beyerle. On October 1, 1957, parts of the Göttingen Institute were relocated to Aachen through takeover by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Beyerle continued the further development of the centrifuge in closer proximity to Wilhelm Groth. In Göttingen and subsequently Aachen, Beyerle u. a. three centrifuges delivered to the University of São Paulo . From the mid-1950s he constructed the improved models ZG 3 and ZG 5, which achieved excellent separation performance at the Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn (including Wilhelm Groth) during the 1960s, and another ZG 3 followed Kiel (Prof. Hans Martin). As a result of the declaration of the "gas centrifuge" division as a state secret on August 26, 1960, no detailed results of the research were published.

Memberships

• German Physical Society
• Advisory member of CERN in Geneva

Awards

• November 20, 1977 "Alfried Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach Prize for Energy Research" for his "services to the development of the ultracentrifuge for uranium enrichment"

Fonts (selection)

• A contribution to the development of the cathode oscilloscope with cold cathode. In: Archives for electrical engineering. Volume 25, 1931, pp. 267-276, J. Springer, Berlin 1931, doi: 10.1007 / BF01657420 , also: Dissertation, TH Aachen, 1930.
• with Wilhelm Groth , Paul Harteck and Johannes Jensen : About gas centrifuges. Enrichment of the xenon, krypton and selenium isotopes according to the centrifuge process (= monographs on "Angewandte Chemie" and "Chemie-Ingenieur-Technik". Supplement 59). Verlag Chemie, Weinheim / Bergstrasse 1950.

literature

• Beyerle, Konrad. In: Who is who? The German who's who. XIII. Edition, arani Verlag, Berlin 1958, pp. 86–87; XIV. Edition, Volume 1: Federal Republic of Germany and West Berlin. 1963, p. 104; XV. Edition, Volume 1 (West), 1967, p. 132; XVI. Edition, Volume 1: Federal Republic of Germany West Berlin. 1970, p. 85.
• Beyerle, Konrad. In: JC Poggendorff (founder): Biographical-literary concise dictionary of the exact natural sciences. Volume VIIa, Part 1: A-E. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1956, p. 174; Volume VIII, Part 1: A – Da. Wiley-VCH, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-527-40141-5 , p. 391
• Stephan Geier: Threshold power. Nuclear energy and foreign policy in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1980. Dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy and Theology Department, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, 2011.
• Rainer Karlsch: Hitler's bomb. The secret history of the German nuclear weapon tests. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-05809-1 , p. 124 ff.
• Michael Schaaf: The physical chemist Paul Harteck (1902–1985). Dissertation, University of Stuttgart, 1999.
• Hans-Friedrich Stumpf: Nuclear energy research in Celle 1944/45. The secret work on uranium isotope separation in the Seldenwerk Spinnhütte (= Celler contributions to regional and cultural history. Volume 25). Published by Stadt Celle, Celle 1995, ISBN 3-925902-20-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ life data according to the article Beyerle, Konrad. In: JC Poggendorff (founder): Biographical-literary concise dictionary of the exact natural sciences. Volume VIII, Part 1: A – Da. Wiley-VCH, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-527-40141-5 , p. 391
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m} Hans-Friedrich Stumpf: Nuclear energy research in Celle 1944/45. The secret work on uranium isotope separation in the Seldenwerk Spinnhütte (= Celler contributions to regional and cultural history. Volume 25). Published by Stadt Celle, Celle 1995, ISBN 3-925902-20-1 .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Beyerle, Konrad. In: Who is who? The German who's who. XVI. Edition, Volume 1: Federal Republic of Germany West Berlin. arani Verlag, Berlin 1970, p. 85.
4. ↑ Beyerle, Konrad. In: Who is it? IX. Edition, Verlag Hermann Degener, Berlin 1928, p. 120.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Rainer Karlsch: Hitler's bomb. The secret history of the German nuclear weapon tests. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-421-05809-1
6. ↑ ^{a b} Stephan Geier: threshold power. Nuclear energy and foreign policy in the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1980. Dissertation, Faculty of Philosophy and Theology Department, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, 2011.
7. ↑ The Fuhrer's bomb-makers. In: Der Spiegel . No. 49/1977 of November 28, 1977.