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Hans Ferdinand Mayer (born 23 October 1895 in
Pforzheim
Pforzheim () is a city of over 125,000 inhabitants in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg, in the southwest of Germany.
It is known for its jewelry and watch-making industry, and as such has gained the nickname "Goldstadt" ("Golden City") ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
; died 18 October 1980 in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
,
West Germany
West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
and
physicist
A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe.
Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate caus ...
. He was the author of the "
Oslo Report The Oslo Report was one of the most spectacular leaks in the history of military intelligence. Written by German mathematician and physicist Hans Ferdinand Mayer on 1 and 2 November 1939 during a business trip to Oslo, Norway, it described several G ...
", a major military intelligence leak which revealed German technological secrets to the British Government shortly after the start of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Biography
Hailing from a modest background, Mayer volunteered for service in WWI where he was severely wounded on his 19th birthday. He subsequently studied mathematics, physics and astronomy at the
University of Karlsruhe
The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association.
KIT was created in 2009 w ...
and the
University of Heidelberg
}
Heidelberg University, officially the Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg, (german: Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg; la, Universitas Ruperto Carola Heidelbergensis) is a public research university in Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, ...
. In 1920, he attained a doctorate "on the behaviour of molecules in relation to free slow electrons". His professor was
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
winner
Philipp Lenard
Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard (; hu, Lénárd Fülöp Eduárd Antal; 7 June 1862 – 20 May 1947) was a Hungarian-born German physicist and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his work on cathode rays and the discovery of m ...
. In 1922 he joined the Berlin laboratory of
Siemens & Halske AG
Siemens & Halske AG (or Siemens-Halske) was a German electrical engineering company that later became part of Siemens.
It was founded on 12 October 1847 as ''Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske'' by Werner von Siemens and Johann Ge ...
. From 1926 he co-operated with
Karl Küpfmüller
Karl Küpfmüller (6 October 1897 – 26 December 1977) was a German electrical engineer, who was prolific in the areas of communications technology, measurement and control engineering, acoustics, communication theory, and theoretical electro-te ...
. Both scientists concerned themselves with interference-free information transfer in long distance circuits, important in developing telecommunications. In 1936 Mayer became the Director of the Siemens Research Laboratory in Berlin.
In 1943 he was arrested for political reasons (listening to the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, and criticism of the Nazi regime), although the Nazis never knew of the existence of the ''Oslo Report''. He was saved from execution by the intervention of his doctoral supervisor Lenard, ironically an ardent Nazi supporter. He was first interned in
Dachau, then in four other concentration camps until the end of the war.
Johannes Plendl
Johannes "Hans" Plendl (6 December 1900 – 10 May 1991), German radar pioneer, was the scientist whose airplane navigation inventions made possible the early German bombing successes in World War II.
Early life
Plendl was born in 1900 in Munich, ...
also played a role in his survival in the camps, by appointing Mayer to head a radio laboratory, although Mayer had no experience in radio.
After WWII Mayer, along with other German scientists, went to the USA as part of
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World Wa ...
. Initially he worked in the
U.S. Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
’s primary research laboratory at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB) is a United States Air Force base and census-designated place just east of Dayton, Ohio, in Greene County, Ohio, Greene and Montgomery County, Ohio, Montgomery counties. It includes both Wright and Patte ...
, Dayton, Ohio. In 1947 he moved to
Cornell University
Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...
, as a Professor of Electrical Engineering. In 1950 he returned to Germany, where he was head of the Siemens & Halske research department for communications technology in
Munich
Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...
until 1962.
''Oslo Report''
Hans Ferdinand Mayer was the author of the ''
Oslo Report The Oslo Report was one of the most spectacular leaks in the history of military intelligence. Written by German mathematician and physicist Hans Ferdinand Mayer on 1 and 2 November 1939 during a business trip to Oslo, Norway, it described several G ...
'', one of the most serious breaches of German security in World War II. He signed it as "a German scientist, who is on your side", before sending it to the British Embassy in
Oslo, Norway
Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of i ...
, in early November 1939. In his position at Siemens he had access to a wide range of information regarding the development and application of electronics in current and future weapons systems and radar.
The breadth (and uneven quality) of information in his Report led to initial scepticism amongst the British intelligence community about its veracity, but the technical detail of the information concerning electronics caught the attention of
Dr. R.V. Jones, a brilliant young scientist who had recently been appointed to the Air Ministry. Jones, who was highly regarded by Churchill and eventually rose to the position of Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science), found the ''Oslo Report'' extremely useful in anticipating and countering the deployment of new
German radar systems, and the
radio beam systems used to guide German bombers to their targets.
The existence of the ''Oslo Report'' became more widely known through a talk given by Jones in 1947, although he did not become aware of its author's identity until late 1953, finally confirming it by meeting Mayer in 1955. Jones agreed to keep Mayer's identity secret, to avoid possible retribution against Mayer and his family.
Mayer did not tell his own family until 1977 that he had written the ''Oslo Report''. His will was written so that his authorship of the Report would only be published after the death of himself and his wife. Jones respected Mayer's wishes, not revealing his identity until 1989.
Works
In November 1926, Mayer published an article (H. F. Mayer. "On the equivalent-circuit scheme of the amplifier tube". ''Telegraph and Telephony'', 15:335-337, 1926) which describes the transformation of spare voltage supplies after equivalent current sources. It is an extension of
Thévenin's theorem
As originally stated in terms of direct-current resistive circuits only, Thévenin's theorem states that ''"For any linear electrical network containing only voltage sources, current sources and resistances can be replaced at terminals A–B b ...
stating that any collection of voltage sources and resistors with two terminals is electrically equivalent to an ideal current source.
Edward Lawry Norton
Edward Lawry Norton (July 28, 1898 – January 28, 1983) was an accomplished engineer and scientist. He worked at Bell Labs and is known for Norton's theorem.
His areas of active research included network theory, acoustical systems, electro ...
likewise described this in 1926 in an internal report for
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
.
The theorem is well-known under the name
Norton's theorem
In direct-current circuit theory, Norton's theorem, also called the Mayer–Norton theorem, is a simplification that can be applied to networks made of linear time-invariant resistances, voltage sources, and current sources. At a pair of term ...
or Mayer-Norton theorem. Hans Ferdinand Mayer published some 25 technical articles and held more than 80 patents.
Honours
*Honorary doctorate at the Technical University of Stuttgart (1956)
*Gauss-Weber-Medaille from the University of Goettingen
*Philipp-Reis-Preis from Deutsche Post (1961)
*Ehrenring from the
VDE (1968)
Sources
*Don H. Johnson: '' Scanning Our Past - Origins OF the Equivalent Circuit Concept: The Current SOURCE Equivalent '', 200
PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOLUME. 91, NO. 5, MAY 2003* Jones, R. V., 1989, Reflections on Intelligence, London: Heinemann.
External links
accessed 3 May 2010
accessed 4 May 2010
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayer, Hans Ferdinand
Cornell University faculty
20th-century German mathematicians
20th-century German physicists
World War II espionage
1895 births
1980 deaths