Winfried Otto Schumann

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Winfried Otto Schumann (1974)

Winfried Otto Schumann (born May 20, 1888 in Tübingen ; † September 22, 1974 in Munich ) was a German physicist who became known for predicting the Schumann resonance .

Life

He spent his youth in Kassel and in Berndorf near Vienna . He studied electrical engineering at the Polytechnic School in Karlsruhe . In 1912 Schumann received his doctorate in the field of high voltage technology .

Before the First World War he was the head of the high voltage laboratory at Brown, Boveri & Cie . In 1920 he became a professor at the Technical University of Stuttgart , where he previously worked as a research assistant. Afterwards he became professor for applied physics at the University of Jena . Then in 1924 he became professor at the electrophysical laboratory of the Technical University of Munich , which later became the Electrophysical Institute, where he worked until his retirement in 1961 and then until he was 75 years old. In 1945 he was elected a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . After working for Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio from 1947 through Operation Paperclip , he returned to Munich in 1948.

Schumann died at the age of 86.

plant

Schumann postulated that the ionosphere - it is part of the earth's atmosphere - is a cavity resonator in which standing electromagnetic waves with specific resonance frequencies are established. He investigated this phenomenon, taking into account the damping and excitation of the resonances by lightning in a series of articles between 1952 and 1957. These resonant waves were named after him as Schumann resonances and were experimentally proven in 1960.

Honorary positions

Among other things, Schumann was a member of the board of directors of the Deutsches Museum in Munich and a member of the administrative board of Bayerischer Rundfunk .

Awards

Fonts (selection)

  • Electric breakdown field strength of gases (1923)
  • Basic electromagnetic terms (1931, Oldenbourg. 2nd edition 1944, 3rd edition 1950)
  • Electric waves (1948, Hanser)
  • About the temporal form and the spectrum of emitted dipole signals in a dielectric hollow sphere with conductive walls. With particular application to atmospheric signals. (1956, Beck, PDF online )

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Walter Rollwagen : Obituary (pdf)
  2. ↑ VDE ring of honor . Accessed January 31, 2018.
  3. ↑ publications.badw.de
personal data
SURNAME Schumann, Winfried Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Tübingen
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1974
Place of death Munich