Walter Dieminger

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Walter E. Dieminger (born July 7, 1907 in Würzburg ; † September 29, 2000 in Northeim ) was a German geophysicist and high-frequency technician . He was also a pioneer of the German movement of radio amateurs .

Life

After graduating from high school, Walter Dieminger began studying technical physics at the Technical University of Munich in 1926 , from which he graduated in 1931. Under the guidance of Jonathan Zenneck he received his doctorate in 1935 with a thesis on the correlation between the state of the ionosphere and the propagation of electromagnetic waves to Dr. rer. tech.

When he was around 20, he also turned to radio transmission in his private life. He had the amateur radio call signs "EK4UAB" (1926), "D4UAB" (1929), "D2ds" (1935) and "DL6DS" (after 1949). He was a co-founder of the organized amateur radio movement in Germany.

From 1934 he headed the "Special Radio Group" at the Air Force Test Center in Rechlin, where he developed and tested radio navigation procedures. In 1937 he passed the state examination to become a master flight engineer and acquired various flight licenses. In 1942 Dieminger became director of the central office for radio advice, whose headquarters were relocated to Leobersdorf near Vienna in 1943. Their predictions, calculated according to the code invented by Karl Rawer , became important for the successful military use of shortwave. In 1944 Dieminger became acting director of the Fraunhofer Institute founded by Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer in Freiburg. In the course of the military development, the central office moved to Ried im Innkreis at the beginning of 1945.

After the end of the war, British, French and US American experts from the Field Intelligence Agency (Technical Branch) examined the work of the group and, in a generous interpretation of an instruction from Nobel Prize winner Sir Edward Appleton , his employee William Roy Piggott organized the relocation of the most important equipment on his own in March 1946 and some employees with families in the British occupation zone in Lindau am Harz.

In 1946, Dieminger was incorporated into the Kaiser Wilhelm Society and in 1951 accepted into the Max Planck Society . Dieminger's institute in the Max Planck Society was initially called “Institute for Ionospheric Research in the Administration of the MPG”, after 1956, after merging with Erich Regener's Max Planck Institute for Stratosphere Physics, it was then called “MPI for Stratosphere and Ionosphere Physics” “And since 1958 Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy . In July 2004 the institute was renamed the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.

Dieminger completed his habilitation at the University of Göttingen in 1948 and was appointed adjunct professor in 1954. He wrote 120 scientific publications and was editor of the Zeitschrift für Geophysik from 1961 to 1988. Dieminger was a member of various internationally respected academies (such as the Leopoldina since 1968), he received the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon in 1972 and was an honorary citizen of Lindau.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Heinz Schifferdecker, Horst Ellgering: Chronicle of the amateur radio in Germany and in the Cologne-Aachen area. Amateur Radio Television Working Group, 1991, archived from the original on February 2, 2011 .