Konrad Beyerle

Key takeaways

Konrad Beyerle belongs to engineering; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Konrad Beyerle to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Konrad Beyerle from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Konrad Beyerle (1900 in Freiburg im Breisgau – 1979) was a German engineer. During World War II, he was in charge of centrifuge research and development at Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H. He participated in the development of ultracentrifuges for the enrichment of uranium done under the auspices of the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. After the war, he was head of the Institute for Instrumentation of the Max Planck Society.

Education Beyerle had a doctorate.

Career As late as 1935, Beyerle was employed at the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG, General Electric Company). No later than 1938, he was employed at the Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H. Shortly after the discovery of nuclear fission in December 1938/January 1939, the Uranverein, i.e., the German nuclear energy project, had an initial start in April before being formed a second time under the Heereswaffenamt (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) in September 1939. Beyerle soon brought his industrial expertise to the project for the development of an ultracentrifuge for the enrichment of uranium-235, in collaboration with Paul Harteck, director of the Physical Chemistry Department at the University of Hamburg, and his colleague Wilhelm Groth. Construction began in the autumn of 1941, and it was done under the auspices of an Heereswaffenamt contract let by Kurt Diebner, director of the Kernforschungsrat (Nuclear Research Council), under General Carl Heinrich Becker of the HWA. Konrad Beyerle was in charge of centrifuge development at Anschütz in Kiel. In 1943, enrichment to 5% was achieved, however, technical difficulties and the war hindered large-scale production. In July 1944, the Anschütz company was struck during an Allied air raid, and the exact part of the plant that was working on centrifuges was destroyed. Beyerle moved his effort south and merged with Hartick’s group in Freiburg and Kandern, the locations to which the Institute of Physical Chemistry had moved in hopes of avoiding Allied air raids. Avoiding the air raids only lasted until September 1944. After World War II, Beyerle was head of the Institut für Instrumentenkunde (Institute for Instrumentation) of the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG, Max Planck Society, successor organization to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft), in Göttingen, where he continued research and development of centrifuges. Two of his colleagues at the institute were H. Freise and H. Billing.

Internal Reports The following report was published in Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte (Research Reports in Nuclear Physics), an internal publication of the German Uranverein. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.

Konrad Beyerle Die Gaszentrifugenanlage für den Reichsforschungsrat G-248 (12 December 1944)

Patents Konrad Beyerle (Kiel) Coupling Device, U.S. Patent 2,158,102, Assignor: Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (Berlin), Filing date: September 14, 1935 Konrad Beyerle (Kiel-Neumuhlen) System for the Electrical Transfer of Rotary Motion U.S. Patent 2,157,094, Assignor: Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H., Filing date: July 27, 1938 Konrad Beyerle (Kiel-Neumuhlen) System for the Electrical Transfer of Rotary Motion U.S. Patent 2,184,576, Assignor: Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H., Filing date: October 15, 1938 Konrad Beyerle (Göttingen) Rotating System for Observation Centrifuges for the Determination of Molecular Weight, U.S. Patent 2,617,585, Filing date: March 31, 1950 Konrad Beyerle (Göttingen) Damping Bearing for the Shafts of a Gas Centrifuge, U.S. Patent 3,097,167, Filing date: February 20, 1958 Konrad Beyerle (Aachen) and Karl Heinz Wedge (Bonn) Centrifuge with Rotating Drum, U.S. Patent 3,281,067, Filing date: August 29, 1960 Konrad Beyerle (Aachen) Mounting for Gyros, U.S. Patent 3,416,377, Filing date: April 18, 1966

Books by Beyerle Konrad Beyerle, Wilhelm Groth, Paul Harteck, and Johannes Jensen Über Gaszentrifugen: Anreicherung der Xenon-, Krypton- und der Selen-Isotope nach dem Zentrifugenverfahren (Chemie, 1950), as cited in Walker, 1993, 278.

Bibliography Hentschel, Klaus (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources (Birkhäuser, 1996) Walker, Mark German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949 (Cambridge, 1993) ISBN 0-521-43804-7

Notes

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Konrad Beyerle

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Konrad Beyerle claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In engineering, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Konrad Beyerle before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Konrad Beyerle ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Konrad Beyerle

In research: Konrad Beyerle appears in engineering research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Konrad Beyerle in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Konrad Beyerle is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1900 births, 1979 deaths, 20th-century German engineers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Konrad Beyerle outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Konrad Beyerle in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Konrad Beyerle means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Konrad Beyerle out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Konrad Beyerle in simple terms?

Konrad Beyerle (1900 in Freiburg im Breisgau – 1979) was a German engineer. During World War II, he was in charge of centrifuge research and development at Anschütz & Co.

Why does Konrad Beyerle matter?

Because it connects several engineering ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Konrad Beyerle?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Konrad Beyerle.