Richard Vieweg

Gotthold Richard Vieweg (born April 25, 1896 in Topfseifersdorf ; † October 20, 1972 in Kälberbronn ) was a German physicist and president of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig .

Life

Vieweg comes from a pastor's family. He attended the Fürstenschule, a humanistic high school in Meissen , where he graduated from high school in 1914. After his participation in the First World War , he studied from 1919 physics and mathematics at the technical universities of Berlin-Charlottenburg and in Dresden , where he in 1923 with a work over contact potential differences between annealed in vacuum metals Dr. rer. techn. (Doctor of Technical Sciences) PhD . From 1923 to 1935 he was a member of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt (PTR), most recently in the field of high voltage technology . In 1935 he was appointed director of the Institute for Technical Physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt .

Vieweg was intensely involved in the research on V2 development, which was carried out in the Peenemünde Army Research Center . He was the head of the four-year plan institute for technical physics of plastics at the TH Darmstadt, founded in 1943, which was supposed to support the Nazi regime's efforts to become self-sufficient. For this purpose, a new building was built in Darmstadt between 1939 and 1942. The architect of the building was the Darmstadt architecture professor Karl Gruber . The building was severely damaged in September 1944. After the Second World War, Wernher von Braun tried to get Vieweg to come to the USA for his developments. However, this refused the request.

After the resignation of Erich Reuleaux , Vieweg took over the office of Rector of the TH Darmstadt in July 1946 . He held this office until autumn 1947.

From 1951 to 1961 he was President of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig. His fields of work were the history of metrology , tribology , high voltage engineering and the physical properties of plastics . In 1952 he was appointed honorary professor at the Technical University of Braunschweig . In 1961, after ten years at the PTB, he retired and returned to the TH Darmstadt as an honorary professor.

Further commitment and honors

• From 1953, Vieweg was a member (and later Vice President) of the mathematical and natural science class of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz , a full member of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and the Braunschweig Scientific Society, and a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Madrid .
• 1960 to 1964 he was President of the International Committee for Weights and Measures (CIPM) and played a key role in the founding of the International Organization for Legal Metrology (OIML).

• 1956: Dr.-Ing. eh Technical University of Darmstadt
• 1957: Silver plaque of merit from the city of Darmstadt
• 1959: Karmarsch commemorative coin from the Hanover University Community
• 1962: Grashof commemorative coin of the Association of German Engineers
• 1966: Large Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic of Germany

• The VDI-Gesellschaft Kunststofftechnik has been awarding the Richard Vieweg Medal of Honor since 1978 .

Works

Vieweg wrote more than 250 writings, including around 20 books

• About contact potential differences between metals annealed in a vacuum. (= Dissertation, Dresden July 1923). Excerpt from: Annalen der Physik. 4th Series, Volume 74. 1924, pp. 146-170, OCLC 314584265 .
• Measure and measure from a cultural-historical perspective. in: Contributions to the history of science and technology. Issue 4. F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1962, OCLC 5014290 .
• Depreciation and the need for replacement of scientific equipment. OECD, Paris 1963, OCLC 752921555 .
• Ephemeris and Atomic Time. in: Treatises of the mathematical and natural science class. Born 1965, No. 11. F. Steiner, Wiesbaden 1966, OCLC 24127567 .
• From the cultural history of the scales. (Ed. by Bizerba-Werke, Wilhelm Kraut KG, Balingen (Württ.), on the occasion of the 100th anniversary, 1866–1966). 1966.
• Richard Vieweg (ed.): Plastic manual. 12 volumes. Hanser, Munich 1963–1973.
• Investigations into the stability of torpedoes. 3rd report: Contribution to the simulation of differential equations for stability studies. Institute for technical physics at the TH Darmstadt.

literature

• Karl Gruber: The new building of the institute for technical physics, in: The institute for technical physics of the Technical University Darmstadt, Darmstadt 1943.
• Melanie Hanel: The Technical University of Darmstadt in the “Third Reich”, dissertation, Darmstadt 2013.
• Kurt Jäger, Friedrich Heilbronner: Lexicon of electrical engineers . 2nd Edition. VDE-Verlag, 2010, ISBN 978-3-8007-2903-6 ( table of contents, 125 kB [PDF]).
• Dieter Kind:  Vieweg, Gotthold Richard. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 26, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-428-11207-5 , p. 807 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Vieweg in the catalog of the German National Library
• Vieweg, Gotthold Richard. Hessian biography. (As of August 2, 2020). In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
• Vieweg, Richard on worldcat.org (list of publications)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e} U. Stille (obituary of the Braunschweigische Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft): Richard Vieweg ( Memento from January 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on digisrv-1.biblio.etc.tu-bs.de, accessed on September 27 2013. (PDF)
2. ↑ PTR / PTB: 125 years of metrological research p. 36. on ptb.de, accessed on December 29, 2015. (PDF; 4.5 MB)
3. ↑ Richard Vieweg Medal of Honor on vdi.de, accessed on September 27, 2013.