Manfred Popp

Manfred Popp (born September 5, 1941 in Munich ) is a German physicist . He is State Secretary a. D. , was chairman of the board of the Karlsruhe Research Center and now works as a consultant. For several years he has been dealing with the history of the German “ uranium project ” in World War II.

Life

Popp studied nuclear physics at the University of Bonn , where he received his doctorate in 1970 . After two years as a visiting scientist at the Weizmann Institute for Science in Rehovot / Israel , he joined the Federal Ministry for Research and Technology ; There he heads the energy research subdivision with a focus on nuclear technology (advanced reactors , nuclear fuel cycle, reactor safety, nuclear fusion and nuclear research centers) and renewable energies .

In 1987 Popp was appointed State Secretary of the Hessian Ministry for the Environment and Nuclear Safety in Wiesbaden , where he primarily devoted himself to promoting modern waste management , preserving the Messel pit as a fossil site, and rehabilitating the nuclear facilities in Hanau .

From 1991 to 2006, Popp was chairman of the board of the Karlsruhe Research Center, which under his leadership transformed from a former nuclear research center into a research facility in the fields of energy research, nano- and microtechnologies and astroparticle physics . His concept of merging the research center and university to form the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), which he developed together with the University of Karlsruhe , led to success in the first round of the German universities' excellence initiative in 2006 .

In 1997, Popp was appointed honorary professor at the Technical University of Darmstadt . In 2000 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class . Popp has been a member of the board of the Karl Heinz Beckurts Foundation , Munich , since 2000, member of the board of the KIT Foundation since 2012, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Center for Art and Media Technology (ZKM) Karlsruhe, and Chairman of the Art Association , Karlsruhe. In 2012 he was made an honorary citizen of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

In 2013 his book Germany's Energy Future was published by Wiley Verlag Weinheim. Since then he has devoted himself to the history of the German uranium project in World War II , to a certain extent the predecessor organization of the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center. As a nuclear physicist and science manager, he found new aspects that show why the uranium association was unsuccessful and that no work was ever done on developing an atomic bomb . He has published his results in reports on the history of science , the spectrum of science and in "Quanten 6", the 2018 yearbook of the Heisenberg Society.

Web links

• Literature by and about Manfred Popp in the catalog of the German National Library
• Energie-Fakten.de