Siegfried Heitz

Siegfried Heitz (born September 9, 1929 in Berlin ) is a German geodesist and was most recently a university professor at the University of Bonn . In his scientific work, the reformulation of the physical-mathematical foundations of geodesy, which he laid down in several textbooks, should be emphasized.

After attending school in Berlin, Bergreichenstein and Coburg, Heitz studied surveying at the State Building School in Munich and the University of Bonn. After completing his studies in 1956 and working as an assistant to Helmut Wolf at the Institute for Theoretical Geodesy in Bonn, he received his doctorate in 1958 with a topic on conformal mapping onto the ellipsoid of revolution. This was followed by the Great State Examination in 1961 and a further period as a research assistant until 1962 at the same institute. From 1962 to 1965 he was a lecturer at the engineering school for civil engineering in Essen . From 1966 to 1972 he headed the geodesy department of the Institute for Applied Geodesy in Frankfurt / Main. During this time he did his habilitation with a topic on astrophysical geoid determination in Bonn in 1968. In 1972 he was named ord. Professor for Higher Geodesy and Astronomy at the Technical University of Berlin . From 1980 to 1995 he was professor for astronomical, physical and mathematical geodesy at the Institute for Theoretical Geodesy at the University of Bonn. In 1993 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Stuttgart for his outstanding scientific achievements.

Siegfried Heitz took over the lectures “ Astronomical Geodesy ”, “ Earth Measurement ” and “ Land Surveying ” from Karl-Rudolf Koch and Manfred Bonatz in Bonn and gave them the names “Astronomical-physical geodesy” and “ Mathematical geodesy ” - the latter area was for many years his preferred research area.

He placed particular emphasis on the mathematical and physical principles and in 1980 published the first volume of his Mechanics of Solid Bodies with applications in geodesy, geophysics and astronomy in Dümmler Verlag. The second volume followed in 1983 and finally in 1985 his book Coordinates on Geodetic Reference Surfaces , which was also published in English by Springer Verlag in 1988 with the title Coordinates in Geodesy .

Heitz dealt intensively with geoid determination and especially with the German astrogeoid (see also IfAG ), for which Helmut Wolf's preliminary work for the European network in the 1950s was beneficial. With the chosen mathematical model, in which the interpolation according to the smallest squares was used , in the opinion of some specialist colleagues, however, he did not achieve an adequate approximation, since the perpendicular deviations received improvements (residuals) of up to 3 "(about 5 times the measurement error). He devoted further work to the physical fundamentals of the earth's gravitational field and problem areas of mechanics .

In his lectures and specialist books, Heitz did not stop at mathematical and physical basics, but dealt in particular with geodetic modeling . He published the results in 1990 together with E. Stöcker-Meier in the book Fundamentals of Physical Geodesy , which so far has had a total of three editions. In 2003 he published a monograph Fundamentals of Quantum Field Theory with applications in quantum electrodynamics as a supplement.

literature

• ZfV, Journal of Surveying, Issue 5, 2004, p. 361, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr.-Ing. E. h. Siegfried Heitz 75 years