Paul Guest

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Adolf Emil Paul Gast (born September 1, 1876 in Wiesbaden ; † August 19, 1941 in Innsbruck ) was a German geodesist and rector of RWTH Aachen University.

biography

After graduating from high school, Gast studied land surveying at the Agricultural University in Berlin , where he joined the Saxonia ad chain, the later RSC-Corps Saxonia-Berlin, and at the agricultural faculty of the University of Bonn . In 1903 he did his doctorate at the University of Heidelberg under Karl Wilhelm Valentiner and completed his habilitation a year later at the Technical University of Darmstadtwith Paul Fenner. Here he taught geodesy, astronomical localization and practical geometry as a private lecturer with interruptions until 1911. In the meantime, from 1906 to 1909 he was appointed scientific advisor and director of studies of the War Academy for the Instituto Geográfico Militar (IGM) in Buenos Aires and was instrumental in this at Involved in building the trigonometric networks there.

He then accepted a call to RWTH Aachen University, where he was appointed full professor of geodesy and successor to Richard Schumann with effect from March 1, 1911 . After a two-year break in army service during the First World War , he returned to Aachen and, as the successor to Friedrich Klockmann , headed the university as its rector from 1920 to 1922. He then spent a second working stay in Argentina , where he was now increasingly occupied with the development of surveying and with further mathematical-geodetic studies, but returned to Aachen in 1926. Only one year later, Gast took over the management of the Geodetic Institute he initiated at the Schneiderberg of the Technical University of Hanover , which he had equipped with an astronomical observatory , among other things . As a result, in just a few years he created the conditions for a compact geodetic full course of study for surveyors. Further, now mostly shorter, foreign missions followed at irregular intervals and so a terrestrial photogrammetry of the Ramesseum in Egypt was created. He was also concerned with the evaluation of the trigonometric survey of the Alai - Pamir area, which his private lecturer and, after Edwin Feyer, the next but one successor, Richard Finsterwalder , had carried out in 1928.

On May 1, 1933, Paul Gast joined the NSDAP as one of the first Hanoverian professors ( membership number 2,957,992). As early as 1932 he published “Our new way of life. A technical-scientific design ”. This work was described as "one of the strongest ideological works of National Socialist stamping alongside Rosenberg's 'Myth of the 20th Century'". In November 1933 he signed the German professors' confession of Adolf Hitler .

Paul Gast stayed in Hanover until 1939 and died two years later in Innsbruck.

Research area

Already early on, Gast carried out research in the field of adjustment calculations and long polygons and polygonally measured triangles and was therefore considered a pioneer of trilateration and a pioneer of photogrammetry , which he presented in detail in his main work, Lecture on Photogrammetry , in 1930 . In the same year, on this occasion, he developed a new device for bridging spaces without fixed points by means of aerotriangulation , which was then known as the "Gastsche Optical Pyramid". With these new technical possibilities, he tried to combine photogrammetry and earth surveying and also the much noticed bridging of the Atlantic Ocean by means of aerotriangulation.

Paul Gast also made great contributions to founding the German-South American Institute in Aachen in 1912 and co-founding the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin in 1923 . In addition, he also dealt with philosophical questions such as the meaning of technology and the expansion of a new worldview.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Technical University of Aachen 1870-1920 : a memorial. Aachen: La Ruelle'sche Accidenzdruckerei and lith. Institute (owner Jos. Deterre), 1920.
  • Weight ratios and adjustment of the polygonal triangle , in: Zeitschrift für Vermessungswesen No. 50, 1921.
  • Lecture on photogrammetry , Johann Ambrosius Barth, Leipzig, 1930.
  • Expansion of our worldview and sense of technology , in: VDI magazine , No. 76, 1932.
  • Hypothesis-free determination of the earth's figure with new tools , in: Zeitschrift für Geophysik, No. 9, 1933.
  • The optical pyramid, a new device for the determination of control points in aerial photography , in: Bildmessung und Luftbildwesen, No. 9, 1934.

literature

  • Richard Finsterwalder :  Guest, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964, ISBN 3-428-00187-7 , p. 85 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Paul Trommsdorff: The faculty of the Technical University of Hanover 1831-1931 , Hanover, 1931, p. 68.
  • Carl Weigandt: History of the Corps Saxonia-Berlin to Aachen 1867-1967 , Aachen, 1968.
  • Schröder, Anette, men of technology in the service of war and nation: students of the TH Hannover. In: Baier, Karen, Frank Sparing, Wolfgang Woelk (eds.), Universities and colleges during National Socialism and in the early post-war period. Wiesbaden 2004.
  • Michael Jung: Our hearts beat with enthusiasm towards the Führer. The Technical University of Hanover and its professors under National Socialism. BOD, Norderstedt 2013, ISBN 978-3-8482-6451-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Jung: Our hearts beat enthusiastically to the Führer. The Technical University of Hanover and its professors under National Socialism. P. 232.
  2. ^ Schröder, Anette, men of technology in the service of war and nation: students of the TH Hannover. In: Baier, Karen, Frank Sparing, Wolfgang Woelk (eds.), Universities and colleges during National Socialism and in the early post-war period. Wiesbaden 2004. p. 45.
personal data
SURNAME Guest, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Guest, Adolf Emil Paul (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geodesist and rector of RWTH Aachen
DATE OF BIRTH September 1, 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Wiesbaden
DATE OF DEATH August 19, 1941
Place of death innsbruck