Technical University of Berlin

Carl Bosch was a German chemist and engineer and Nobel laureate in chemistry. He was a pioneer in the field of high-pressure industrial chemistry... and founder of IG Farben, at one point the world's largest chemical company. Bosch was born in Cologne, Germany to a successful gas and plumbing supplier. His uncle Robert Bosch pioneered the development of the spark plug. Carl, trying to decide between a career in metallurgy or chemistry, studied at the Technical College of Charlottenburg and the University of Leipzig from 1892–1898. In 1899 he took an entry level job at BASF, then Germany's largest chemical and dye firm. From 1909 until 1913 he transformed Fritz Haber's tabletop demonstration of a method to fix nitrogen using high pressure chemistry into an important industrial process to produce megatons of fertilizer and explosives. The fully developed system is called the Haber–Bosch process. After World War I Bosch extended high-pressure techniques to the production of synthetic fuel and methanol. In 1925 Bosch helped found and was the first head of IG Farben and from 1935 chairman of the board of directors.
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Dennis Gabor CBE, FRS was a Hungarian-British electrical engineer and inventor, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received... the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was born as Günszberg Dénes, into a Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, as the first born son of Günszberg Bernát and Jakobovits Adél. In 1902, the family received the permission to change their family name from Günszberg to Gábor. He served with the Hungarian artillery in northern Italy during World War I. He studied at the Technical University of Budapest from 1918, later in Germany, at the Charlottenburg Technical University in Berlin, now known as the Technical University of Berlin. At the start of his career, he analysed the properties of high voltage electric transmission lines by using cathode-beam oscillographs, which led to his interest in electron optics. Studying the fundamental processes of the oscillograph, Gabor was led to other electron-beam devices such as electron microscopes and TV tubes. He eventually wrote his Ph.D. thesis concerning the cathode ray tube in 1927, and worked on plasma lamps.
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Fritz Haber was a German chemist, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his development for synthesizing ammonia, important for... fertilizers and explosives. Haber, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid. He has also been described as the "father of chemical warfare" for his work developing and deploying chlorine and other poisonous gases during World War I. Haber was born in Breslau, Germany , into a Hasidic Jewish family. His family was one of the oldest families of that town. Haber later converted from strict Judaism to Lutheranism. His mother died during childbirth. His father was a well-known merchant in the town. From 1886 until 1891, he studied at the University of Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen, at the University of Berlin in the group of A. W. Hofmann, and at the Technical College of Charlottenburg under Carl Liebermann. He married Clara Immerwahr during 1901. Clara was also a chemist and an opponent of Haber's work in chemical warfare.
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Gustav Ludwig Hertz was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz. Hertz was born in Hamburg,... the son of Auguste and a lawyer, Dr. Gustav Hertz. He studied at the Georg-August University of Göttingen , the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich , and the Humboldt University of Berlin . He received his doctorate in 1911 under Heinrich Leopold Rubens. From 1911 to 1914, Hertz was an assistant to Rubens at the University of Berlin. It was during this time that Hertz and James Franck performed experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases, known as the Franck–Hertz experiments, and for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1925. During World War I, Hertz served in the military from 1914. He was seriously wounded in 1915. In 1917, he returned to the University of Berlin as a Privatdozent. In 1920, he took a job as a research physicist at the Philips Incandescent Lamp Factory in Eindhoven, which he held until 1925.
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Gerhard Ertl is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der... Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl’s research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhausts and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. His work has paved the way for development of cleaner energy sources and will guide the development of fuel cells, said Astrid Graslund, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. He won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces. The Nobel academy said Ertl provided a detailed description of how chemical reactions take place on surfaces. His findings applied in both academic studies and industrial development, the academy said. “Surface chemistry can even explain the destruction of the ozone layer, as vital steps in the reaction actually take place on the surfaces of small crystals of ice in the stratosphere,” the award citation reads.
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Gerhard Ertl is a German physicist and a Professor emeritus at the Department of Physical Chemistry, Fritz-Haber-Institut der... Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin, Germany. Ertl’s research laid the foundation of modern surface chemistry, which has helped explain how fuel cells produce energy without pollution, how catalytic converters clean up car exhausts and even why iron rusts, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. His work has paved the way for development of cleaner energy sources and will guide the development of fuel cells, said Astrid Graslund, secretary of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. He won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his studies of chemical processes on solid surfaces. The Nobel academy said Ertl provided a detailed description of how chemical reactions take place on surfaces. His findings applied in both academic studies and industrial development, the academy said. “Surface chemistry can even explain the destruction of the ozone layer, as vital steps in the reaction actually take place on the surfaces of small crystals of ice in the stratosphere,” the award citation reads.
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Jan Kaplický was a world-renowned Czech architect who spent a significant part of his life in the United Kingdom. He was the leading architect... behind the innovative design office, Future Systems. He was best known for the futuristic Selfridges Building in Birmingham, England, and the Media Centre at Lord's Cricket Ground in London. In February 2007, he won the international architectural competition for the new building of the National Library of the Czech Republic in Prague, a project that was subsequently cancelled. Jan Kaplický, the only child of a sculptor and a botanical illustrator, was born on 18 April 1937 in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and grew up in a suburb of Prague called Ořechovka. Between 1956 and 1962 he studied at the College of Applied Arts and Architecture and Design in Prague, receiving a Diploma in Architecture. He worked in private practice in Czechoslovakia between 1964 and 1968. In the wake of the Prague Spring, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he escaped to London in September 1968 with fellow architect Jaroslav Vokoun carrying only US$100 and a few pairs of socks.
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