Winfried Oppelt

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Winfried Oppelt (born June 5, 1912 in Hanau ; † October 4, 1999 in Zorneding ) was a German engineer and university professor . He was a professor for control engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt .

Life

Oppelt studied technical physics and graduated in 1934 as a Dipl.-Ing. at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He worked for the German Aviation Research Institute in Berlin until 1937 and then went to Kiel to work for the company Anschütz . He received his doctorate in Darmstadt in 1943 with the writing of Damping Control Processes by Delayed Return .

After various professional positions, including at the Wöhler Institute of the Technical University of Braunschweig , from 1952 he was a lecturer for "control problems in electrical engineering" at the Technical University of Darmstadt. In 1954 it was decided here to set up the first chair for “control engineering” in the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1957, Oppelt was appointed professor to the previously established chair for control engineering in the Institute for Control Engineering (IRT) in the electrical engineering and information technology department . His first assistants were K. Barth, R. Bräu and M. Thoma , who later became a professor in Hanover.

Here Oppelt initially built up new research areas: “Theoretical principles of control engineering”, “Vehicle and flight control” and “The human being as controller”. In 1959 the "Control Engineering and Technical Electronics" course was founded.

After Henning Tolle was appointed, Oppelt established an additional field of "control system theory" in addition to the existing "control technology" department. At the same time, the research was expanded to include the areas of “Artificial Intelligence”, “Autonomous Systems” and “Darmstadt Robot Hand”. Based on a curriculum designed by Robert Piloty and Winfried Oppelt, the first computer science course in Germany was established in 1968 at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the TH Darmstadt .

In 1977 Oppelt retired , but he continued to work scientifically. As his successor, Rolf Isermann from Stuttgart was appointed to the chair of "Control System Technology". In connection with the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Control Engineering on June 18, 1982, the Aachen and Munich Prize of the Dr. Carl Arthur Pastor Foundation to Winfried Oppelt. Professors Manfred Thoma (Hanover), Günther Schmidt (Munich) and Franz Mesch (Karlsruhe) are among his most famous academic students .

Oppelt had a high reputation in the professional world and had numerous worldwide contacts, in particular his relationships with specialist colleagues in the former GDR should be emphasized . The latter go back to the first founding institutes for control engineering in German-speaking countries: 1955 at the TH Dresden by Heinrich Kindler (1909–1985), in 1956 at the TH Darmstadt by Winfried Oppelt and in 1957 at the RWTH Aachen by Otto Schäfer (1909–2000 ). This series was then continued in rapid succession at other technical universities. This also fulfilled a demand made by Hermann Schmidt , which he had raised together with the VDI technical committee for control engineering in the “Memorandum for the establishment of an institute for control engineering” in 1941, but initially only his appointment to the first chair for Control engineering in Germany at the TH Berlin-Charlottenburg in October 1944 - the establishment of the first institute remained open at that time.

Winfried Oppelt and Heinrich Kindler had successfully endeavored to maintain professional and personal contacts despite the growing political restrictions (also visible in the honorary doctorate for Kindler at the TH Darmstadt). These contacts were continued by their academic students in West and East, so that particularly good relationships developed between the later professorships of Manfred Thoma (Hanover), Günther Schmidt (Munich), Franz Mesch (Karlsruhe), Heinz Töpfer (Magdeburg, Dresden) , Hans-Joachim Zander (Dresden), Karl Reinisch (Ilmenau) a. a. Oppelt cultivated his many professional and personal connections all over the world, not least he regularly took part in the International Scientific Colloquium (IWK) of the TH Ilmenau with a lecture every three years and held discussions here, especially with his colleagues from the Eastern countries .

Awards (selection)

Fonts (selection)

  • Winfried Oppelt: Small manual of technical control processes. Verlag Chemie, Weinheim, 1st edition 1954; 4th edition Verlag Chemie, Weinheim and Verlag Technik, Berlin 1964, 5th edition 1972 (also several translations).
  • Herbert Geyer, Winfried Oppelt (Hrsg.): Economic control processes compared to control processes in technology. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1957.
  • Winfried Oppelt, Gerhard Vossius (ed.): The human being as a regulator. Verlag Technik, Berlin 1970.
  • Winfried Oppelt: About the engineer's conception of man - an inventory and open questions in the cybernetic modeling of human behavior. Franz Steiner Verlag, Wiesbaden, Stuttgart 1984.
  • Winfried Oppelt: An arrangement of layers to represent the hynotic trance states. In: Experimental and clinical hypnosis 1990 VI issue 1, pp. 31-56.

literature

  • Otto Schäfer : Basics of the automatic regulation. Technischer Verlag Heinz Resch, Graefelfing 1953, 7th edition 1974.
  • Heinrich Kindler : Collection of exercises on control engineering. Verlag Technik Berlin, Oldenbourg-Verlag Munich, Vienna, 1964 (with H. Buchta and H.-H. Wilfert).
  • Herbert Schlitt : Stochastic processes in linear and non-linear control loops. Vieweg Verlag, Braunschweig, Verlag Technik, Berlin 1968.
  • Manfred Thoma : Theory of linear control systems - with 71 examples and 150 exercises. Vieweg, Braunschweig 1973. ISBN 3-528-04850-6 .
  • Karl Reinisch : Cybernetic basics and description of continuous systems . Verlag Technik Berlin 1974.
  • Manfred Thoma , Günther Schmidt (Hrsg.): Advances in measurement and automation technology through information technology - INTERKAMA Congress 1986 . Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York / London / Paris / Tokyo 1986, ISBN 3-540-17033-2 .
  • Franz Mesch : Classic, reread: W. Oppelt, Small manual of technical control processes. In: at-Automatisierungstechnik , Munich, vol. 35, 1987, pp. 221-224.
  • Manfred Thoma : Heinz Töpfer 60 years. In: at-Automatisierungstechnik , Munich, vol. 38, no. 7, 1990, pp. 245-246.
  • Frank Dittmann: On the development of the “general regulatory knowledge” in Germany. Hermann Schmidt and the “Memorandum for the establishment of an institute for control engineering” . In: Wiss. TU Dresden magazine . Vol. 44, No. 6, 1995, pp. 88-94.
  • Werner Kriesel , Hans Rohr, Andreas Koch: History and future of measurement and automation technology. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1995, ISBN 3-18-150047-X .
  • M. Buss: Günther Schmidt on his 70th birthday . In: at-Automatisierungstechnik , vol. 53, 2005, p. 225.
  • KH Fasol , R. Lauber; F. Mesch , H. Rake , M. Thoma , H. Töpfer : Great Names and the Early Days of Control in Germany. In: at-Automatisierungstechnik , Munich, Vol. 54, No. 9, 2006, pp. 462–472.
  • Günther Schmidt , Georg Bretthauer (Ed.): Collection of essays on the 100th birthday of Winfried Oppelt. In: at-Automatisierungstechnik , Munich, vol. 60, 2012, no. 6.
  • Werner Kriesel : Future models for computer science, automation and communication. In: Frank Fuchs-Kittowski, Werner Kriesel (Hrsg.): Computer science and society. Festschrift for the 80th birthday of Klaus Fuchs-Kittowski . Peter Lang International Science Publishers, PL Academic Research, Frankfurt a. M. / Bern, Bruxelles / New York / Oxford / Warszawa / Vienna 2016, ISBN 978-3-631-66719-4 (print), E- ISBN 978-3-653-06277-9 (e-book).
  • Christopher Bissell: In Memoriam Winfried Oppelt . (PDF; 289 kB) In: at - Automatisierungstechnik , 60 (6), 2012, pp. 325–329.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christine Pieper: Hochschulinformatik in the Federal Republic and the GDR until 1989/1990 . In: Science, Politics and Society . 1st edition. Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-515-09363-7 .
  2. ^ Rolf Isermann, Henning Tolle: Professor Winfried Oppelt 1912–1999 . In: at - automation technology, methods and applications in control, regulation and information technology . tape 48 , issue 1/2000. Oldenburg Verlag, January 2000, ISSN  0178-2312 , p. 47 f .
  3. ↑ VDE ring of honor . Accessed January 31, 2018.
personal data
SURNAME Oppelt, Winfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German engineer and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 5, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau
DATE OF DEATH 4th October 1999
Place of death Anger thing