Norbert Langhoff
Norbert Langhoff (born October 28, 1935 in Łódź ) is a German engineer , scientist and entrepreneur .
Scientific career
Langhoff attended elementary school in Litzmannstadt, today Łódź (Poland), from 1940 to 1944. He obtained his Abitur in 1953 in Sondershausen, Thuringia . He completed an apprenticeship as a precision mechanic in 1955 as a skilled worker. From 1955 to 1960 Langhoff studied at the University of Electrical Engineering in Ilmenau , specializing in automation technology .
After completing his studies, he switched to the Academy of Sciences in the GDR , where he worked from 1960 to 1970 as a development engineer and research assistant. In 1970 he was appointed director of the Center for Scientific Device Construction (ZWG), which he headed until December 31, 1991, in accordance with the unification agreement.
In 1974 he received his doctorate in Ilmenau on the subject of "Increasing the detection sensitivity of analytical measuring devices using accumulators". In 1985 his habilitation took place at the academy on the subject: "Some aspects of the application of information-theoretical foundations in scientific device construction" and the appointment to professor.
Act as an entrepreneur
From 1991 Langhoff was committed to the restructuring of the former academy site in Berlin-Adlershof into a modern research and technology campus in the form of today's WISTA technology park . Together with Klaus Thiessen, he is considered to be one of the intellectual fathers of the Adlershof technology park. The former ZWG with its 1,700 employees proved to be a source of numerous start-ups, some of which kept their headquarters in Adlershof.
Langhoff became an entrepreneur in the IGZ innovation and start-up center of the Adlershof technology park. First he founded the consulting company "ISTC Industrial, Science and Technology Consult GmbH" in 1990, which was dedicated to technology transfer and cooperation with Eastern Europe, especially with Russia. In 1993 Langhoff and two colleagues founded the IfG - Institute for Device Construction GmbH, from which the Institute for Applied Photonics eV emerged in 1999. In 2005 the IfG was transferred to today's “Institute for Scientific Instruments GmbH”, which specializes in innovative X-ray light guides, and of which he continues to be the managing director even in old age.
Langhoff is widowed and has two children.
Pioneer in the field of X-ray diagnostics
Already in the 1960s developed Langhoff in collaboration with a physicist, the first X-ray fluorescence - spectrometer in the GDR, which then in production at since the early 1970s, Carl Zeiss Jena were transferred.
Building on the results of the Rossendorf Research Center for a new generation of X-ray detectors from the 1980s, Langhoff opened up a new field of work after founding IfG GmbH: the research, development, further development and application of X-ray capillary optics. In cooperation with Russian scientists, the possible uses of such glass capillary optics in X-ray analytical devices were investigated and drawing systems for the production of such capillary optics were built in-house after the possibilities of using such capillary optics in commercial devices had previously been demonstrated. Using this cutting-edge technology, it has been possible to achieve world market leadership in X-ray light guides for diffractometry .
Another result of the research and development work is the development of a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer with an integrated camera, which can be used for the on-site examination of objects from the fields of art and archeology.
In the medical technology , the advantages of using monochromatic were X-rays in mammography detected. In particular, a special method for the therapy of brain tumors with the help of modified computer tomographs was developed. By using contrast media that accumulate in the area of the tumors, it was possible to increase the dose, which was further increased by beam focusing and monochromatization with the help of a special graphite crystal-based X-ray optics developed by IfG GmbH .
Langhoff's activities also led to the development of a femtosecond plasma-based X-ray source, which is now used in various modifications at the Max Born Institute in Berlin and in the Hamburg branch (Advanced Study Group) of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen . Further sources were developed for the University of Potsdam and the University of Göttingen.
As part of a joint project with the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing , the Institute for Applied Photonics e. V. and PNSensor GmbH (Munich), an X-ray color camera of the highest spatial and spectral resolution was developed, which is a world first with the combination of spatial and energetic resolution.
Social skills and memberships
From 1989 to 1991 Langhoff was a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR. From 1975 to 1989 he was a member of the “Coordinating Committee for Scientific Equipment Manufacture in the Socialist Countries”. From 1985 to 1990 he headed the "Scientific Device Construction" coordination group of the Academy of Sciences and the universities of the GDR.
He was involved in the Chamber of Technology (KdT), of which he was vice-president from 1985 to 1990, and in the 1990s in the successor organization IvB Ingenieurverein Berlin and the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI). Until 2002 he was chairman of the VDI district group Adlershof, since then honorary chairman. Since 1993 he has been a member of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin. V. He is an active member of the supervisory board of Röntgen AG Berlin-Adlershof, the competence network for optical technologies OpTec Berlin-Brandenburg and the Brücke Osteuropa eV
Honors
- 2011: Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany
Publications
- N. Langhoff et al. (eds.): Handbook of Practical X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis , Springer, 2006, ISBN 978-3-540-28603-5
Web links
- Website of the Institute for Scientific Instruments GmbH
- Arrived in the West - settled and made a career: The story of Norbert Langhoff , Die Welt, October 4, 2004
- Construction East: The Return of the Unwinded , Der Spiegel, 3/2007
- Norbert Langhoff: Science Leads to New Products and Jobs - be inquisitive, be innovative, be berlin.
- BerliNews: Prof. Norbert Langhoff on his 70th birthday
- Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, hardly any high technology, afterwards a controversial evaluation (PDF; 75 kB), Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, 2009
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Langhoff, Norbert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German engineer and equipment manufacturer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 28, 1935 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Łódź |