Moritz Weber

Moritz Weber

Moritz Gustav Weber (born July 18, 1871 in Leipzig , † June 10, 1951 in Neuendettelsau ) was a German engineer and university professor .

Life

Moritz Weber was born on July 18, 1871 in Leipzig. He grew up in Hanover in the house of his grandfather Moritz Rühlmann . His academic teacher was the mathematician Felix Klein , with whom he was an assistant in Göttingen.

After completing his studies, he went to Berlin in 1904, where he worked as a government builder for the railroad on the first project to electrify the light rail and on the water supply for the Charlottenburg station. In 1904 he became a full professor for mechanics at the Technical University of Hanover and from 1913 full professor for mechanics in shipbuilding and marine engineering at the Technical University (Berlin-) Charlottenburg . He worked there until his retirement in 1936.

For a long time he was dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. On the occasion of his retirement he became an honorary senator of the Technical University of Berlin.

tomb

Moritz Weber was married to Margarethe geb. Leyn, the couple had two children. He died on June 10, 1951 in Neuendettelsau. He is buried in the Evangelical Churchyard Nikolassee in Berlin.

Scientific activity

Weber worked on the motion of Halley's comet , the d'Alembert principle , the Lagrangian equation of motion , the perfect mass balance and problems of the coupling vibrations. He was particularly interested in similarity mechanics and model science, for which he developed a system. The so-called Weber number , a dimensionless quantity in fluid mechanics, is named after him.

From the problem of determining the ship resistance for shipbuilding, the requirement arose to construct an exact similarity mechanism. Weber's first publication in 1919 in the yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society deals with similarity mechanics . Weber was of the opinion that the scientific aid of similarity mechanics and dimensional analysis is not only of direct importance for model experiments in shipbuilding, but also for model experiments in other areas of technical physics such as thermodynamics, electrical engineering and strength theory.

In his opinion, similarity physics does more than just provide instructions for setting up and evaluating model experiments. He highlighted the general scientific importance of the principle of similars as suggested by Isaac Newton . His publication “The general principle of similarity in physics and its connection with the theory of dimensions and model science” in the 1930 yearbook of the Shipbuilding Society provides information. A treatise in the 1942 yearbook contains a historical consideration of the development of experimental research in shipbuilding in connection with an appreciation of the two model researchers William Froude and Reech.

literature

• TH Hannover (ed.): Catalogus Professorum. The teaching staff of the Technical University of Hanover 1831–1856 , Hanover: Technical University of Technology 1956, p. 164.

Web links

Commons : Moritz Weber  - Collection of images, videos and audio files