Manfred von Ardenne

Manfred Baron von Ardenne (; 20 January 190726 May 1997) was a German researcher, autodidact in applied physics, and an inventor. He took out approximately 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics, and radio and television technology. From 1928 to 1945, he directed his self-funded and private research laboratory Forschungslaboratorium für Elektronenphysik, where he developed and invented many techniques used in modern physics.

After World War II, von Ardenne was held in Soviet custody and was one of many of the German nuclear physicists in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons, and later honored with the Stalin Prize.

Upon his return to the then East Germany, he started another private engineering firm, Forschungsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne. Ardenne is seen as one of the main inventors of the television.

Career

Early years

The stormy life of von Ardenne's grandmother, Elisabeth von Ardenne (1853–1952), is said to have been the inspiration for Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane, one of the most famous German realist novels.

Born in 1907 in Hamburg to a wealthy aristocratic family, Ardenne was the oldest of five children. In 1913, Ardenne's father, assigned to the Kriegsministerium, moved to Berlin. From Ardenne's earliest youth, he was intrigued by any form of technology, and this was fostered by his parents. Ardenne's early education was at home through private teachers. In Berlin, from 1919, Ardenne attended the Realgymnasium, where he pursued his interests in physics and technology. In a school competition, he submitted models of a camera and an alarm system, for which he was awarded first place.

In 1923, at the age of 15, he received his first patent for an electronic tube with multiple (three) systems in a single tube for applications in wireless telegraphy. At this time, Ardenne prematurely left the Gymnasium to pursue the development of radio engineering with the entrepreneur Siegmund Loewe, who became his mentor. Loewe built the inexpensive Loewe-Ortsempfänger OE333 with Ardenne's multiple system electronic tube. In 1925, from patent sales and publication income, Ardenne substantially improved the broadband amplifier (resistance-coupled amplifier), which was fundamental to the development of television and radar. in Berlin-Lichterfelde, to conduct his own research on radio and television technology and electron microscopy. He invented the scanning electron microscope. He financed the laboratory with income he received from his inventions and from contracts with other concerns. For example, his research on nuclear physics and high-frequency technology was financed by the Reichspostministerium (RPM, Reich Postal Ministry), headed by Wilhelm Ohnesorge. M von Ardenne attracted top-notch personnel to work in his facility, such as the nuclear physicist Fritz Houtermans, in 1940. Ardenne also conducted research on isotope separation. The small list of equipment Ardenne had in the laboratory is impressive for a private laboratory. For example, when on 10 May 1945 he was visited by NKVD Colonel General V. A. Makhnjov, accompanied by Soviet physicists Isaak Kikoin, Lev Artsimovich, Georgy Flyorov, and V. V. Migulin (of the Russian Alsos operation), they praised the research being conducted and the equipment, including an electron microscope, a 60-ton cyclotron, and plasma-ionic isotope separation installation.

At the Berlin Radio Show in August 1931, Ardenne gave the world's first public demonstration of a television system using a cathode-ray tube for both transmission and reception. (Ardenne never developed a camera tube, using the CRT instead as a flying-spot scanner to scan slides and film.) Ardenne achieved his first transmission of television pictures on 24 December 1933, followed by test runs for a public television service in 1934. The world's first electronically scanned television service then started in Berlin in 1935, the Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow, culminating in the live broadcast of the 1936 Summer Olympic Games from Berlin to public places all over Germany.

In the Soviet Union

Von Ardenne, Gustav Hertz, Nobel laureate and director of Research Laboratory II at Siemens, Peter Adolf Thiessen, ordinarius professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für physikalische Chemie und Elektrochemie (KWIPC) in Berlin-Dahlem, and Max Volmer, ordinarius professor and director of the Physical Chemistry Institute at the Berlin Technische Hochschule, had made a pact. The pact was a pledge that whoever first made contact with the Soviets would speak for the rest. The objectives of their pact were threefold: (1) Prevent plunder of their institutes, (2) Continue their work with minimal interruption, and (3) Protect themselves from prosecution for any political acts of the past. Before the end of World War II, Thiessen, a member of the NSDAP, had Communist contacts. On 27 April 1945, Thiessen arrived at von Ardenne's institute in an armored vehicle with a major of the Soviet Army, who was also a leading Soviet chemist, and they issued Ardenne a protective letter (Schutzbrief).

All four of the pact members were taken to the Soviet Union. Von Ardenne was made head of Institute A, in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi. In his first meeting with Lavrentiy Beria, von Ardenne was asked to participate in the Soviet atomic bomb project, but von Ardenne quickly realized that participation would prohibit his repatriation to Germany, so he suggested isotope enrichment as an objective, which was agreed to.

Goals of Ardenne's Institute A included: (1) Electromagnetic separation of isotopes, for which von Ardenne was the leader, (2) Techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation, for which Peter Adolf Thiessen was the leader, and (3) Molecular techniques for separation of uranium isotopes, for which Max Steenbeck was the leader; Steenbeck was a colleague of Hertz at Siemens.

Others at Institute A included Ingrid Schilling, Alfred Schimohr, Gerhard Siewert, and Ludwig Ziehl. By the end of the 1940s, nearly 300 Germans were working at the institute, and they were not the total work force.

Hertz was made head of Institute G, in Agudseri (Agudzery), in Moscow; he was given a design bureau to work on the production of heavy water. In Institute A, Thiessen became leader for developing techniques for manufacturing porous barriers for isotope separation.

At the suggestion of authorities, Ardenne eventually shifted his research from isotope separation to plasma research directed towards controlled nuclear fusion.

In 1947, Ardenne was awarded a Stalin Prize for his development of a table-top electron microscope. In 1953, before his return to Germany, he was awarded a Stalin Prize, first class, for contributions to the atomic bomb project; the money from this prize, 100,000 Rubles, was used to buy the land for his private institute in East Germany. According to an agreement that Ardenne made with authorities in the Soviet Union soon after his arrival, the equipment which he brought to the Soviet Union from his laboratory in Berlin-Lichterfelde was not to be considered as "reparations" to the Soviet Union. Ardenne took the equipment with him in December 1954 when he returned to the then East Germany.

Return to (East) Germany

After Ardenne's arrival in the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), he became "Professor für elektrotechnische Sonderprobleme der Kerntechnik" (Professor of electrotechnical special problems of Nuclear Technology) at the Technische Hochschule Dresden. He also founded his research institute, "Forschungsinstitut Manfred von Ardenne", in Dresden, which with over 500 employees became a unique institution in East Germany as a leading research institute that was privately run. However it collapsed with substantial debts after German reunification in 1991 and re-emerged as Von Ardenne Anlagentechnik GmbH. Ardenne twice won the GDR's National Prize.

In 1963, Ardenne became president of the "Kulturbund" of the DDR. During the period 1963 to 1989, he was a delegate to the "Volkskammer" of the DDR, as well as a member of the "Kulturbund-Fraktion".

In 2002 the German "Europäische Forschungsgesellschaft Dünne Schichten" ("European Thin-Film Research Society") named an annual prize in von Ardenne's honor.

Personal life

In 1937, Ardenne married Bettina Bergengruen; they had four children.

3 July 1941 – Silver Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences 2 January 1945 – Appointed to the Reichsforschungsrat 8 December 1947 – Stalin Prize of the USSR 31 December 1953 – Stalin Prize of the USSR 26 July 1955 – Member of the Physics Section of the German Academy of Sciences 10 November 1955 – Member of the Wissenschaftlichen Rates für friedliche Anwendung der Atomenergie (Scientific Council for Peaceful Applications of Atomic Energy) of the Council of Ministers of the GDR 1 June 1956 – Honorary Professor at the Technische Hochschule Dresden 15 July 1957 – Member of the Forschungsrates (Research Council) of the GDR 7 December 1957 – Ernst Moritz Arndt Medal 18 April 1958 – Peace Medal of the GDR 25 September 1958 – Honorary Doctorate of Natural Sciences from the Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald 7 October 1958 – National Prize, First Class 4 January 1959 – Grand Cross of Service Medal of the United Arab Republic 27 May 1961 – President of the Gesellschaft für biomedizinische Technik (Society for Biomedical Technology) 2 November 1962 – member of the Wissenschaftlichen Rates des Ministerium für Gesundheitswesen (Scientific Council of the Ministry for Health Service) of the GDR 7 October 1965 – National Prize, Second Class 15 December 1965 – Member of the International Astronautical Academy of Paris 12 May 1970 – Lenin Medal 29 October 1973 – Hans Bredow Medal 12 December 1978 – Honorary Doctor of Medicine of the Akademie Dresden 20 June 1979 – Honorary Member of the Forschungsrates of the GDR 1 December 1981 – Barkhausen Medal of the Technische Universität Dresden 20 January 1982 – Gold Patriotic Service Medal 22 September 1982 – Honorary Doctor of Education of the Pädagogische Hochschule Dresden*25 October 1983 – Honorary Member of the Gesellschaft für Ultraschalltechnik (Society for Ultrasonics) 19 February 1984 – Honorary Member of the Ärztegesellschaft für Sauerstoff-Mehrschritt-Therapie (Physicians Society for Oxygen Multi-step Therapy) 11 April 1986 – Wilhelm Ostwald Medal of the Saxony Academy of Sciences 2 June 1986 – Richard Theile Medal of the German Television Technology Society 9 July 1986 – Ernst Abbe Medal of the Chamber of Technology of the GDR 24 April 1987 – Medal of the Art and Science Senate of Hamburg 15 May 1987 – Ernst Krokowski Prize of the Society for Biological Cancer Prevention 3 March 1988 – Ernst Haeckel Medal of Urania 21 October 1988 – Gold Diesel Medal of Munich 25 November 1988 – Friedrich von Schiller Prize of Hamburg 26 September 1989 – Honorary Citizen of Dresden 15 July 1993 – Colani Design France Prize

Books

Manfred von Ardenne Tabellen der Elektronenphysik, Ionenphysik und Übermikroskopie. Bd. 1. Hauptgebiete (VEB Dt. Verl. d. Wissenschaften, 1956) Manfred von Ardenne Tabellen zur angewandten Kernphysik (Dt. Verl. d. Wissensch., 1956) Manfred von Ardenne Eine glückliche Jugend im Zeichen der Technik (Kinderbuchverl., 1962) Manfred von Ardenne Eine glückliche Jugend im Zeichen der Technik (Urania-Verl., 1965) Manfred von Ardenne Ein glückliches Leben für Technik und Forschung (Suhrkamp Verlag KG, 1982) Manfred von Ardenne Sauerstoff- Mehrschritt- Therapie. Physiologische und technische Grundlagen (Thieme, 1987) Manfred von Ardenne Sechzig Jahre für Forschung und Fortschritt. Autobiographie (Verlag der Nation, 1987) Manfred von Ardenne Mein Leben für Forschung und Fortschritt (Ullstein, 1987) Siegfried Reball, Manfred von Ardenne, and Gerhard Musiol Effekte der Physik und ihre Anwendungen (Deutscher Verlag, 1989) Manfred von Ardenne, Gerhard Musiol, and Siegfried Reball Effekte der Physik und ihre Anwendungen (Deutsch, 1990) Manfred von Ardenne Die Erinnerungen (Herbig Verlag, 1990) Manfred von Ardenne Fernsehempfang: Bau und Betrieb einer Anlage zur Aufnahme des Ultrakurzwellen-Fernsehrundfunks mit Braunscher Röhre (Weidmannsche, 1992) Manfred von Ardenne Wegweisungen eines vom Optimismus geleiteten Lebens: Sammlung von Hinweisen, Lebenserfahrungen, Erkenntnissen, Aussprüchen und Aphorismen über sieben der Forschung gewidmeten Jahrzehnte (Verlag Kritische Wissensch., 1996) Manfred von Ardenne Erinnerungen, fortgeschrieben (Droste, 1997) Manfred von Ardenne, Alexander von Ardenne, and Christian Hecht Systemische Krebs-Mehrschritt-Therapie (Hippokrates, 1997) Manfred von Ardenne Gesundheit durch Sauerstoff- Mehrschritt- Therapie (Nymphenburger, 1998) Manfred von Ardenne Wo hilft Sauerstoff-Mehrschritt-Therapie? (Urban & Fischer Verlag, 1999) Manfred von Ardenne Arbeiten zur Elektronik. 1930, 1931, 1937, 1961, 1968 (Deutsch, 2001) Manfred von Ardenne Die physikalischen Grundlagen der Rundfunkanlagen (Funk Verlag, 2002) Manfred von Ardenne and Manfred Lotsch Ich bin ihnen begegnet (Droste, 2002) Manfred von Ardenne Des Funkbastlers erprobte Schaltungen: Reprint der Originalausgabe von 1926 (Funk Verlag, 2003) Manfred von Ardenne, Gerhard Musiol, and Siegfried Reball Effekte der Physik und ihre Anwendungen (Deutsch, 2003) Manfred von Ardenne Empfang auf kurzen Wellen - Möglichkeiten, Schaltungen und praktische Winke: Reprint der Originalausgabe von 1928 (Funk Verlag, 2005) Manfred von Ardenne, Gerhard Musiol, and Siegfried Reball Effekte der Physik und ihre Anwendungen (Deutsch, 2005) Manfred von Ardenne and Kurt Borchardt (editors) Handbuch der Funktechnik und ihrer Grenzgebiete (Franckh)