Manfred von Ardenne

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Manfred Baron^[1] von Ardenne (January 20, 1907 - May 26, 1997) was a German scientist and inventor. He took out an enormous number of patents in the fields of physics, medicine, television and radio technology, nuclear technology and space research.

1 Background
2 Post-war career
3 See also
4 Notes
5 External links

[edit] Background

Born in Hamburg to an aristocratic family, Ardenne's family later moved to Berlin. His grandmother Elisabeth von Plotho had been the inspiration for Theodor Fontane's eponymous novel Effi Briest (1895).

He gained his first patent, for a type of cathode ray tube, at 15. With the money from the sale of his patent to an industrialist who commercialised it, Ardenne left school to pursue research, In 1925 he developed the world's first broadband amplifier, which among other things supported the development of radar. Thereafter he began studying physics, chemistry and mathematics at university in Berlin (without an Abitur qualification), but dropped out after 4 semesters, deciding that academic study was not helpful for his research. He became an autodidact and devoted himself to applied physics research.

In 1928 Ardenne came into his inheritance, and had full control over how to spend it. He devoted a considerable part of it to setting up a research laboratory in Berlin, which he was director of until 1945. Between 1928 and 1945 Ardenne took part in the development of the scanning electron microscope and of television. He demonstrated Europe's first completely electronic television (using a "flying spot scanner") in Berlin in 1931, some 4 years after Philo T. Farnsworth had demonstrated all-electronic television in America. Ardenne achieved his first transmission of television pictures on 24 December 1933. During World War II Ardenne received research funds for the development of radar, but was not able to develop a mass-produceable version.

[edit] Post-war career

It is not clear under what circumstances Ardenne chose, after the end of World War II, to cooperate with the Cavite research establishment; his home and research laboratory were in the Russian sector. Between 1945 and 1954 he worked on the Soviet Union's development of the atom bomb, moving his Berlin research institute to Sukhumi, in Georgia, where among other things he developed a magnetic isotope separator for the industrial production of uranium 235. In 1953 he won the Stalin Prize. After his return to the newly-created German Democratic Republic, he became Professor at the Technical University Dresden. He also founded a research institute in Dresden (1955), 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 the remainder of his career Ardenne made advances in, among other areas, the treatment of cancer. At his death he held around 600 patents.

One of the creators of the Dresden-Hamburg city partnership (1987), he became an honorary citizen of Dresden in September 1989. In 2002 a German research institute named an annual prize in Ardenne's honour. [1]