Helmut Kirchberg

Helmut Kirchberg (31 January 1906 – 23 May 1983) was a German mining scientist. In 1953 he was appointed Rector of the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology.

Life Kirchberg was born in Mainz in the first decade of the twentieth century. His father was a School Rector. In 1915 the young Kirchberg entered the Gymnasium Zum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen, a secondary school with a Christian and academic focus in Magdeburg. He passed his School Final Exams in 1924.

He went on to study mining at Freiberg, Aachen and Berlin, emerging in 1929 with an engineering degree. He stayed on at the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität Berlin) where he held a succession of junior academic post, and from where he received his doctorate in 1937 for work on "The processing of minerals according to their Thermal Properties" Between 1938 and 1943 he worked as a senior scientific research assistant at the Kaiser William Institute for Iron Research (as it was known at the time) in Düsseldorf. After this, starting in 1943, he worked as a Professor of Mining at the Technische Hochschule Breslau. and in 1969 received the Banner of Labor.

Kirchberg died in Freiberg in May 1983.