chemistry

Nikolaus Riehl

Nikolaus Riehl is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Nikolaus Riehl rather than just read about it. In short: Nikolaus Vasilyevich Riehl (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Риль, romanized: Nikolai Vasilyevich Ril; 1901 — 2 August 1990) was a German nuclear chemist of Russian-Jewish descent. Before the fall of Berlin, he was director of the scientific headquarters of the Auergesellschaft AG, and was taken to the Soviet Union.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Nikolaus Vasilyevich Riehl (Russian: Никола́й Васи́льевич Риль, romanized: Nikolai Vasilyevich Ril; 1901 — 2 August 1990) was a German nuclear chemist of Russian-Jewish descent. Before the fall of Berlin, he was director of the scientific headquarters of the Auergesellschaft AG, and was taken to the Soviet Union. Riehl was one of many of the German nuclear physicist in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons, for which, he was recruited in 1945 until 1955 when he was released from the Soviet custody after accepting a technical position at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. He was a recipient of many former Soviet honors which he was awarded for his work in the Soviet Union.

Education Nikolaus Riehl was born in Saint Petersburg, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1901. His father, Wilhelm Gottfried Riehl, was a German working in Russia as an engineer employed by Siemens; his mother, Elena Riehl (née Kagan) was Russian and was of Jewish descent. Riehl was fluent in both German and Russian languages, and attended the German language schools in Russia. The family stayed throughout the World War I and left for Berlin in 1918; he enrolled to attend the chemistry program at the University of Berlin in 1920. On topics of nuclear science, he collaborated with Otto Hahn on behalf of the Auer Company. Between 1927–29, Riehl defended his thesis in nuclear chemistry, working under Lise Meitner; his thesis contained work on the Geiger-Müller counters for beta ray spectroscopy.

Career

Early years After his doctorate in chemistry, Riehl completed his habilitation but took an employment in the German industry with Auergesellschaft, where he became an authority on luminescence. From 1927, he was a staff scientist in the radiology department and eventually headed the optical engineering department for the company in 1937. From 1939 to 1945, he was the director of the scientific headquarters. During this time, Auergesellschaft had a substantial amount of "waste" uranium from which it had extracted radium. After reading a June 1939 paper by Siegfried Flügge on the technical use of nuclear energy from uranium, Riehl recognized a business opportunity for the company, and, in July of that year, went to the Heereswaffenamt (HWA) – the German Army Ordnance Office – to discuss the production of uranium. The HWA was interested and Riehl committed corporate resources to the task. The HWA eventually provided an order for the production of uranium oxide, which took place in the Auergesellschaft plant in Oranienburg, north of Berlin.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Nikolaus Riehl

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Nikolaus Riehl claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, 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 Nikolaus Riehl 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 Nikolaus Riehl 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 Nikolaus Riehl

In research: Nikolaus Riehl appears in chemistry 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 Nikolaus Riehl 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: Nikolaus Riehl is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1901 births, 1990 deaths, 20th-century German chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Nikolaus Riehl 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.

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How to study Nikolaus Riehl in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Nikolaus Riehl 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 Nikolaus Riehl out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Nikolaus Riehl in simple terms?

Why does Nikolaus Riehl matter?

Because it connects several chemistry 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 Nikolaus Riehl?

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 Nikolaus Riehl.