Paul Rosin

Paul Otto Rosin (born July 24, 1890 in Freiburg im Breisgau ; † March 13, 1967 in London ) was a German thermal engineer, engineer and entrepreneur.

Life

Memorial plaque in Freiberg

Paul Rosin was born in Freiburg / Breisgau in 1890 as the son of law professor Heinrich Rosin and his wife Bona. He attended the humanistic grammar school in Freiburg from 1899 to 1908, after which he studied natural sciences for a semester at the Albert Ludwigs University there . In 1909 he moved to the Bergakademie Freiberg , where he obtained his diploma as a metallurgical engineer in 1914 and took a position as an assistant for trial studies .

During the First World War , Rosin volunteered on January 18, 1915 . For his achievements he was awarded the Iron Cross II. Class (1915), the Knight's Cross II. Class of the Albrecht Order with Swords (1918) and the Silver Medal of the Military Order of St. Henry (1918). Rosin was wounded only once, at the Battle of Verdun .

After the end of the war he resumed his work as an assistant and in 1919 switched from trial studies to metallurgy . In the same year he married Paula Helene Marx and the marriage had three children. Sebastian, born in 1926, in a way continued his father's work. In 1959, he founded Rosin Engineering in London , which dealt with processing and drying systems. He sold it to GEA in 1994 , and today it operates under the name GEA Barr-Rosin . He is currently the owner and managing director of Atritor in Coventry .

In 1920 Paul Rosin received his doctorate in engineering under Carl Schiffner , and only one year later he completed his habilitation. On July 1, 1921, he accepted a position as an engineer for heat management at the state smelting and blue paint works in Halsbrücke , at the same time he continued to work as a private lecturer at the Bergakademie, where he was appointed associate professor for combustion technology in 1928. In 1925 Erich Rammler came to Halsbrücke as a test engineer. He described his first impressions of Rosin in his autobiography My professional life as follows: The problems and goals that he presented to me in a very clear and precise manner, the close connection between technical and scientific work that he declared necessary, the whole personality Rosins, who was only 11 years older than me, captured me. Joint trips took Rosin and Rammler to the Soviet Union in 1932 and to India in 1936.

In 1927 Paul Rosin founded a laboratory for fuel technology and industrial heat management in Dresden. Erich Rammler and Reinhard Fehling were among his employees . In 1932, Rosin finished teaching in Freiberg. He became an honorary professor at the Faculty of Materials Management at the TH Berlin and moved to Berlin-Wannsee .

From 1933 he began to feel the growing anti-Semitism: Although baptized as a Protestant, he was unable to provide evidence of Aryan qualifications due to his Jewish descent, so that his exam permit was revoked in 1933 and he had to formally give up his honorary professorship in 1937. In 1936 he sold his Dresden laboratory to Erich Rammler - with the right of repurchase - and worked mainly in London, a. a. at Imperial College , where he continued his research and lectured. In 1938 he finally emigrated, Reinhard Fehling followed him a year later.

During the Second World War, Rosin was involved in British war research. He worked for the Petroleum Warfare Department and participated in the development of a system for landing aircraft in fog.

After the Second World War, Paul Rosin worked as a consultant for West German companies (including the Didier works ). In 1955 he was appointed to the supervisory board of the Frankschen Eisenwerke Adolfshütte Niederscheld near Dillenburg , and from 1959 he was chairman of the supervisory board. He also worked in England as a scientific consultant for the retail company Marks & Spencer and for the Coalite company . Paul Rosin died in London in 1967.

Scientific work

Paul Rosin was a leading expert in the fields of pulverized lignite combustion and pneumatic drying from the 1920s to 1950s . His work was close to industry, but he always endeavored to work scientifically.

It is known for the RRSB distribution and the It diagram (enthalpy-temperature diagram), both of which still play an important role in process and combustion technology today. Together with Reinhard Fehling, he published the book The It Diagram of Combustion in 1929 . They found that there is a linear relationship between the flue gas volume flow and the calorific value of solid and liquid fuels. This greatly simplified the combustion calculation, an engineering tool, so to speak.

In the 1920s, coal dust prevailed as a cost-effective energy source for power plants. The key to success was knowledge of the influence of particle size and distribution. Together with Erich Rammler, Paul Rosin developed an exponential potential distribution that was formally simplified by Karl Sperling and John Godolphin Bennett . It has since been called RRSB distribution. The decisive publications appeared in 1933.

RRSB distribution diagram

The probability density function of the particle size is:

${\displaystyle f(x)=n({\frac {x}{x'}})^{n-1}\mathrm {e} ^{-\left({\frac {x}{x'}}\right)^{n}},}$

and the distribution function is:

${\displaystyle F(x)=1-\mathrm {e} ^{-({\frac {x}{x'}})^{n}}.}$

The RRSB distribution network was developed for statistical purposes. The RRSB distribution can also be used for many other non-carbonaceous particles.

In 1939 the Swede Waloddi Weibull recognized that the mechanical strength of materials complied with the same statistical principles as particle sizes. In an article published in 1951, he showed the various possibilities of the given distribution. Since then, the name " Weibull distribution " has been used more often than "RRSB distribution".

Works (selection)

• (with Reinhard Fehling): The It-Diagram of Combustion . VDI-Verlag Berlin, 1929
• (with Rammler and Fehling): The combustion performance . VDI-Verlag Berlin, 1930
• (with rammer): grain mills and grinding . VDI-Verlag Berlin, 1931
• (with Rammler): Laws governing the fineness of powdered coal . In: Journal of the Institute of Fuel 7/1933/1, pp. 29-36
• (with Rammler): Contribution to the Drying of Coal . In: Journal of the Institute of Fuel . 8/1936
• The influence of particle size in processes of fuel technology . In: Chemical Engineering Research and Design . 15a / 1937, pp. 167-192
• Total, recoverable and returnable heat in combustion gases . In: Journal of the Institute of Fuel . 18/1945, pp. 53-59
• Total, available, returnable and recoverable heat in combustion gases . Chapman & Hall London, 1963

literature

• H. Reinhard Fehling: Obituary Dr. PO Rosin . In: Journal of the Institute of Fuel 40/1967, p. 274.
• Wolfhard Weber: Paul Rosin: A biographical sketch . In: Humanism and Technology. 1987 yearbook . Berlin. 31/1988, pp. 63-69. ISSN  0439-884X .
• Manfred Rasch: Paul Rosin - engineer, university professor and rationalization specialist. Contributions to the economic, technical and corporate history of the 1920s and 1930s on the basis of his estate . In: History of Technology . 56/1989, pp. 101-137. ISSN  0040-117X .
• Manfred Rasch:  Rosin, Paul. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 22, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-428-11203-2 , p. 92 ( digitized version ).
• Werner Lauterbach : Famous Freiberger: Selected biographies of well-known and deserving personalities . Part 5. Freiberg, 2009. pp. 60-63.
• Dietrich Stoyan : Weibull, RRSB or extreme-value theorists? . In: Metrika . 76/2013, pp. 153-159, ISSN  0026-1335 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Rosin in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Paul Rosin in the Saxon Bibliography

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Professor catalog of the university archive of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, unpublished manuscript
2. ^ Manfred Rasch: Paul Rosin - engineer, university professor and rationalization specialist. Contributions to the economic, technical and corporate history of the 1920s and 1930s on the basis of his estate. In: History of Technology. 56/1989, pp. 101-137. ISSN  0040-117X , p. 117
3. ↑ GEA Barr company history ( Memento of the original from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ http://www.companydirectorcheck.com/sebastian-nicholas-rosin#ap29972363
5. ↑ Erich Rammler: My professional life, parts I to III, unchanged copy of personal notes. , add. to the articles: Angela Kießling u. Susanne Scholze: The academic legacy of Erich Rammler in the university library of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg . Käte Rammler and Hans-Georg Friedel: Erich Rammler private - Biographical data and personal memories . Freiberg 2006. ISBN 978-3-86012-291-4 , p. 24
6. ↑ personal information from Sebastian Rosin
7. ↑ personal information from Sebastian Rosin
8. ↑ personal information from Sebastian Rosin
9. ^ Waloddi Weibull: A statistical distribution function of wide applicability . In: ASME Journal of applied mechanics . 73/1951, pp. 293-297, PDF