Robert von Lieben (September 5, 1878, in Vienna – February 20, 1913, in Vienna) was an Austrian entrepreneur, and self-taught physicist and inventor. Lieben and his associates Eugen Maximilian Reisz and Sigmund Strauss invented and produced a gas-filled triode – the first thermionic valve with a control grid that was designed specifically for amplification rather than demodulation of signals, and is a distant ancestor of the thyratron. After Lieben's death, the "Lieben valve", which is also known in English as the "Lieben-Reisz valve" and in German as the "LRS-Relais" (Lieben-Reisz-Strauss relay), was used in the world's first continuous wave radio frequency generator designed for radio telephony.
Biography Robert von Lieben was the fourth of five children born into a wealthy Viennese Jewish family who were related to the Auspitz, Gomperz, Todesco and Wertheimstein clans. His father Leopold von Lieben managed a family-owned bank and chaired the Vienna Trade Chamber; his mother Anna, née Todesco, younger daughter of Eduard von Todesco, was a talented amateur artist and poet. Well before Robert was born, Anna von Lieben suffered from chronic insomnia, drug addiction and various mental conditions. She was the first long-term patient of Sigmund Freud, who later described her under the alias of Cäcilie M. Robert's parents de facto separated in the 1890s. Robert and his siblings grew up in Todesco Palace and from 1888, the Lieben Palace in Oppolzergasse near the Burgtheater and the University of Vienna. They were raised in the old-fashioned, upper-class Ringstrasse culture, and were exposed to science and philosophy by their home tutor Edmund Husserl and their distinguished relatives Rudolf Auspitz, Adolf Lieben and Franz Brentano – the latter being a daily visitor at the Lieben Palace during Robert's teenage years). Robert attended an academic gymnasium and a Realschule, and was not considered an outstanding student. He leaned to technology and applied research, and spent all of his spare time with brother Ernst and cousin Leo doing experiments. His interests were primarily in the fields of telephony and electricity but he was open to new ideas. Robert left the school without an abitur, which was required to enrol at the University of Vienna, and instead became an apprentice at the Siemens-Schuckert factory in Nuremberg. Having learnt the basics of technology, Robert joined the military and volunteered with the uhlan regiment of the Austro-Hungarian Army. His career ended abruptly a few weeks later after he fell from a horse and was crippled. He never fully recovered from the injuries, which probably contributed to his early death at the age of 34. After his discharge from the Army, Lieben attended Franz S. Exner's classes at the University of Vienna as an audit student; he also attended Walther Nernst's classes at the University of Göttingen, and developed a long-standing friendship with Nernst. During his two years at Göttingen, Lieben designed a camera for photographing the retina of the eye, an electrolytic phonograph and an electric transmission for vehicles. In 1901, Lieben returned to Vienna and set up his own research laboratory in the ground floor of the Lieben Palace. With the help of University chemist Dr. Richard Leiser, he studied X-rays, electric discharge in gases and thermionic emission. In 1903, Lieben purchased a telephone equipment factory in Olomouc; telephony became his main field of work. Factory engineers Eugen Reisz and Siegmund Strauss assisted Lieben at the laboratory, and Leiser was his main scientific advisor until 1909.
The Lieben-Reisz-Strauss valve
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