Paul Alfred Biefeld

Paul Alfred Biefeld (born March 22, 1867 in Jöhstadt , † June 21, 1943 in Granville , Ohio ) was a German astronomer and physicist .

Biefeld emigrated to the United States for the first time in 1881 . He received in 1894 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison the Bachelor of Sciences in Electrical Engineering . Biefeld then took the position of vice principal at Appleton High School , Wisconsin, for three years . From 1899 to 1900 he worked as a laboratory assistant to Professor HF Weber at the ETH Zurich , where he met Albert Einstein . In 1900 he obtained his doctorate from the University of Zurich and on April 11, married Emma Bausch from Frankfurt am Main .

From 1900 to 1906 Biefeld was professor of mathematics, physics and electrical engineering at the Hildburghausen technical center . In 1906 Biefeld finally emigrated to the USA. He settled in Ohio , where he initially taught physics and astronomy until 1911 as a professor at the University of Akron . In 1911 he moved to Granville , Ohio, and was Professor of Astronomy at Denison University until 1936 .

There, in 1923, he induced his protégé Thomas Townsend Brown to continue certain basic research with X-ray tubes , which he had already begun experimentally in 1921. The discoveries made in this context came to be known as the Biefeld-Brown effect . Biefeld also headed the Warner and Swasey Observatory in East Cleveland , Ohio , for which Brown also worked from 1926.

literature

• Library in Granville, Ohio
• American Men of Science Reference, 145