Konrad Gund

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Konrad Gund (born April 25, 1907 in Vienna ; † May 30 or 31, 1953 in Göttingen ) was a physicist and electrical engineer .

Career

Gund attended the secondary school in Vienna until he graduated from high school and studied electrical engineering at the Technical University of Vienna . In 1931 he joined the X-ray department of Siemens & Halske in Vienna as a graduate engineer . He married Dejanire Caurairy (1909–1953) in 1932.

In 1936 he moved to the Siemens-Reiniger design office in Erlangen. From 1942 he first developed in Germany on behalf of the Reich Research Council an electron accelerator type betatron . This had just been developed by Donald Kerst from the University of Illinois . A 6- MeV -Betatron was ready for operation in Erlangen in April 1944. A few months later, in 1944, Rolf Wideröe's 15 MeV betatron went into operation in Hamburg at CHF Müller for the Reich Ministry of Aviation . Towards the end of the war, the Allies confiscated the device and banned basic research with it. Wolfgang Paul achieved through negotiations with the British occupation that a betatron in Göttingen could be used for the first time for cancer therapy by the dermatologist Horst-Günther Bode (1904–1990) at the University of Göttingen . The physicist Hans Kopfermann also used it for fundamental physical experiments that were still forbidden. By Gerhard Schubert , the effects of electron beams on plant and animal tissues were examined by the Radiological Institute of the Gynecological University Hospital. With the so-called “Miracle of Göttingen”, numerous skin cancer patients could also be treated on the first betatron in the II. Physikalisches Institut, Bunsenstrasse. Gund supervised the system and was able to do his doctorate at Kopfermann at the same time in 1947 : An electron gun for 6 million electron volts . This successful work brought him promotion to the overall management of the design office of Siemens-Reiniger in 1949. A further developed Betatron II with 15 MeV was put into operation in the Göttingen Dermatology Clinic, Am Steinsgraben, in 1952 and remained there until 1959. The electron beam was now in an evacuated ceramic tube. But the vacuum did not remain stable. Gund wanted to do without a permanent vacuum pump. When he could not find a solution, he took his own life that day by inhaling coal gas . His shaken wife followed him a day later with deliberate gas poisoning in Erlangen.

Publications

  • Konrad Gund: An electron centrifuge for six million electron volts. Dissertation, Göttingen, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, May 5, 1947

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary by Hans Kopfermann
  2. ↑ German biography
  3. ↑ Siemens opens new MedMuseum in Erlangen
personal data
SURNAME Gund, Konrad
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Physicist and electrical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH April 25, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1953 or May 31, 1953
Place of death Goettingen