Moritz von Rohr

Moritz von Rohr's grave in the north cemetery in Jena

Louis Otto Moritz von Rohr (born April 4, 1868 in Longin, Polish Łążyn, district Inowrazlaw, Polish Inowrocław , province Posen , Polish Poznań ; † June 20, 1940 in Jena ) was a German optician . He developed and improved numerous optical devices and published articles on the history of optics.

Life

Rohr was born the son of a Prussian district commissioner in the province of Posen. After attending grammar school in Inowrazlaw, he studied mathematics , physics and geography at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin . In 1892 he was at the University of Halle for Dr. phil. PhD and became an assistant at the Royal Prussian Meteorological Institute in Berlin. In 1895 he moved to the Carl Zeiss company in Jena. As Ernst Abbe's personal assistant , he began calculating microscope lenses from 1899 . In 1908, Rohr became the scientific director of the newly created glasses department . In 1913 the University of Jena appointed him extraordinary professor for optics in medicine . In 1935 he retired.

plant

Rohr published about 570 journal articles and monographs . In 1913 he founded the magazine for ophthalmic optics and in 1928 the magazine Researches on the History of Optics . He published both of them until his death.

He calculated numerous new optical systems and expanded the theoretical basis for them. In 1904 he and August Köhler developed the UV microscope , which has a particularly high transmission in the range of ultraviolet light. He made important contributions to the scientific foundation of the theory of glasses. In close contact with the later Nobel Prize winner Allvar Gullstrand , he first developed the Katral glasses for the lensless eye after cataract surgery . This was followed in 1912 by the Punktal glasses, which give sharp images regardless of the direction of view and are still part of the Carl Zeiss product range today. Rohr also designed and improved a number of medical optical instruments, for example the cystoscope .

As early as 1907 he developed the Synopter, a device that makes 2D images appear three-dimensional by eliminating the binocular disparity . Because both eyes see an image with the same perspective, the perception of space in the human brain is influenced by other factors such as the relative object size or color shades. The Synopter was not a commercial success for Carl Zeiss and was soon forgotten, but is of interest again today in connection with 3D technology .

Rohr's journalistic contributions to the history of optics are very extensive. He wrote the biographies of important opticians such as Joseph von Fraunhofer , Carl Zeiss and Ernst Abbe. He also published on the history of glasses, camera lenses and optical glass .

Rohr's estate is now in the German Optical Museum , for which he made outstanding contributions as managing director during his lifetime.

Honors

Rohr became honorary member of the Optical Society of London in 1921 and of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in 1926 . The medical faculty of the University of Jena made him an honorary doctorate in 1922 . The Prussian Academy of Sciences awarded him the silver Leibniz Medal in 1934 .

A street in Jena is named after him.

Publications (selection)

• On the determination of those substitution coefficients as a function of time that occur during the rotation of interconnected bodies , dissertation, Halle 1892
• Theory and history of the photographic lens , J. Springer, Berlin 1899
• The production of images in optical instruments from the standpoint of geometric optics (= The theory of optical instruments , Volume 1), J. Springer, Berlin 1904
• The binocular instruments , J. Springer, Berlin 1907
• Treatises on the history of the stereoscope , Engelmann, Leipzig 1908
• The glasses as an optical instrument , Engelmann, Leipzig 1911
• Joseph Fraunhofer's Life, Achievement and Effectiveness , Academic Publishing Society, Leipzig 1929
• On the history of the Zeissische Werkstätte until Ernst Abbe's death (= research on the history of optics , Volume 1, Issue 3), Berlin, Springer 1930; 2nd edition Zeiss, Jena 1936.
• Ernst Abbe , G. Fischer, Jena 1940

literature

• A. König: Moritz von Rohr . In: Naturwissenschaften 28, 1940, pp. 657–658
• Jörg Zaun:  Rohr, Louis Otto Moritz v .. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 3 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Moritz von Rohr  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Moritz von Rohr in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Moritz von Rohr  in the German Digital Library
• Photo Moritz von Rohrs on the Carl Zeiss AG website