Vilho Väisälä

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Vilho Väisälä , until 1906 Vilho Weisell , (born September 28, 1889 in Kontiolahti , Finland , † August 12, 1969 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish meteorologist and entrepreneur .

life and work

He was born the sixth of eight children of Johannes Weisell, an employee of a sawmill in Utra (now part of Joensuu ), and Emma Birgitta Jääskeläinen. The father died in 1904, and the mother, who adopted the Finnish spelling of the family name in 1906, raised the five children who were still underage alone. Nevertheless, the three youngest, Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle , were able to attend university and pursue an academic career.

Vilho Väisälä first attended the classical lyceum in Joensuu and from 1908 studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the University of Helsinki . After completing his studies, he took a position at the Meteorological Institute in Helsinki. His job was to measure the earth's magnetic field in different parts of Finland. In 1916 he was appointed head of the Ilmala aerological kite station. Although he received his doctorate in mathematics (with Ernst Lindelöf ) in 1917 , his turn to meteorology was complete. In 1919 he was appointed director of the aerological department of the Meteorological Institute. In 1920 he went on an extensive study trip that took him to the University of Göttingen , to the then most modern aerological observatory in Lindenberg near Berlin and to Bergen in Norway to see Vilhelm Bjerknes . In 1926 he became a lecturer at the University of Helsinki. The kite station in Ilmala developed under Väisäläs leadership into a representative aerological observatory. He now also constructed meteorological instruments.

In March 1931, one of the early radiosondes of the Soviet meteorologist Pawel Moltschanow (1893-1941) went down in Finland. Väisälä examined the device and decided to develop it further. On December 30, 1931, he managed the first successful launch of his own radiosonde. He perfected the instrument by 1935 before presenting it to his colleagues. When, in the spring of 1936, the "RS 11" radiosonde, a product ready for the market, was available to him, he founded the company Vilho Väisälä Oy . After the company had been called Mittari from 1944 to 1955 , it was finally renamed Vaisala .

In April 1945 a German automatic weather radio station was found on an archipelago near Åland . These WFL devices were designed to independently determine weather data and to transmit the respective temperature, air pressure and wind speed to the war navy's weather service . The WFL with the code name Landjäger was found by two Finnish bird hunters and taken to the Soviet headquarters in Mariehamn . The Soviet authorities, who at that time had control of all military matters in Finland, had Väisälä come to Mariehamn to examine the weather radio together with Soviet experts.

From 1948 to 1956 Väisälä was professor of meteorology at the University of Helsinki. He also remained President of Vaisala until his death in 1969 . By this time the company had already produced its 500,000th radiosonde.

Vilho Väisälä had been married to Aino Maria Fredrika Blomqvist since 1912, with whom he had two children. After his wife died in 1954, he married Anna Maria Immonen in 1955.

Appreciations

The Brunt-Väisälä frequency with which a vertically deflected mass element oscillates in a static system was named after Vilho Väisälä and David Brunt (1886–1965) .

The asteroid (2803) Vilho has had the first name of the Finnish meteorologist since 1983.

Since 1985, the Professor Vilho Väisälä Award has been given by the WMO for outstanding meteorological research, particularly in connection with observation methods and measuring instruments. In 2004 the Executive Council of WMO decided to offer a second Professor Vilho Väisälä Award for work with meteorological devices in developing and emerging countries.

Fonts (selection)

  • Atmospheric cloudiness in Finland in the summer of 1912 , Suomalaisen Tiedeakatemian Kustantama, Helsinki 1918
  • Efforts and proposals for the development of radiometeorographic methods: A preliminary communication , Akad. Buchh., Helsinki 1932
  • A new radiosonde , Akad. Buchh., Helsinki 1936
  • Radiation effects influencing temperature measurements by means of radiosondes in the stratosphere , Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, Helsinki 1967

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Franz Selinger: From “Nanok” to “Eismitte”. Meteorological ventures in the Arctic 1940–1945. Convent, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-12-8 . Page 342
  2. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 7949
  3. ↑ http://www.vaisala.de/de/corporate/history/vilhovaisalaaward/Pages/default.aspx accessed on June 16, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Väisälä, Vilho
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weisell, Vilho
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish meteorologist and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH September 28, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Kontiolahti , Finland
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1969
Place of death Helsinki