Imre Bródy (1891,

Gyula, Hungary Gyula (; ; or ) is a town in Békés County, Hungary. The town is best known for its medieval castle and a thermal bath. Ferenc Erkel, the composer of the Hungarian national anthem, and Albrecht Dürer the Elder, the father of Albrecht ...

Antal Papp: Magyarország (Hungary), Panoráma, Budapest, 1982, , p. 860, pp. 453-456–1944,

Mühldorf Mühldorf am Inn (, ; Central Bavarian: ''Muihdorf am Inn'') is a Town#Germany, town in Bavaria, Germany, and the capital of the Mühldorf (district), district Mühldorf on the river Inn (river), Inn. It is located at , and had a population of ab ...

) was a Hungarian physicist who invented in 1930 the

krypton Krypton (from 'the hidden one') is a chemical element; it has symbol (chemistry), symbol Kr and atomic number 36. It is a colorless, odorless noble gas that occurs in trace element, trace amounts in the Earth's atmosphere, atmosphere and is of ...

-filled

fluorescent lamps A fluorescent lamp, or fluorescent tube, is a low-pressure mercury-vapor gas-discharge lamp that uses fluorescence to produce visible light. An electric current in the gas excites mercury vapor, to produce ultraviolet and make a phosphor ...

(also known as the krypton electric bulb), "The Contribution of Hungarians to Universal Culture" (with inventors), Embassy of the Republic of Hungary in Damascus, Syria, 2006, webpage:
HungEMB-Culture
. with fellow-Hungarian inventors

Emil Theisz Emil may refer to: Literature *''Emil and the Detectives'' (1929), a children's novel *"Emil", nickname of the Kurt Maschler Award for integrated text and illustration (1982–1999) *''Emil i Lönneberga'', a series of children's novels by Astr ...

Ferenc Kőrösy Ferenc () is a given name of Hungarian origin. It is a cognate of Francis, Francisco, Francesco, François, Frank and Franz. People with the name include: * Ferenc Batthyány (1497–1566), Hungarian magnate and general * Ferenc Bene (1944–2 ...

and Tivadar Millner. He developed the technology of the production of krypton bulbs together with

Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi ( ; ; 11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism is a false account of knowle ...

(). He was the nephew of writer Sándor Bródy.

Career

Educated in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, he wrote his doctoral thesis on the chemical constant of monatomic gases. After teaching in a high school, he became an assistant professor in applied physics at the University of Sciences and accomplished valuable theoretical work investigating specific heat and molecular heat. From 1920 he worked with

Max Born Max Born (; 11 December 1882 – 5 January 1970) was a German-British theoretical physicist who was instrumental in the development of quantum mechanics. He also made contributions to solid-state physics and optics, and supervised the work of a ...

as assistant to the professor in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

. They jointly worked out the dynamic theory of crystals. He returned home in 1923 and worked at Tungsram as an engineer to his death. Later in life, Bródy worked on new light source problems. He stayed with his family after the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, and the immunity promised by the factory to him could not save his life. Being Jewish, he was murdered on 20 December 1944, at age 53, in Mühldorf subcamp, a satellite system of the

Dachau concentration camp Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, s ...

. The research institute of Tungsram, now part of

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) was an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conglomerate (company), conglomerate founded in 1892, incorporated in the New York (state), state of New York and headquartered in Boston. Over the year ...

, in

is named after him.

The krypton lamp

Bródy in 1930 filled lamps with krypton gas in lieu of argon. Since the new gas was expensive, he developed a process with his colleagues to obtain krypton from air. Production of krypton filled lamps based on his invention started at Ajka in 1937, in a factory co-designed by Polányi and Hungarian-born physicist Egon Orowan. The invention was the most economic bulb in the age, a real sensation at the time, which for decades was one of the most successful export products of

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, however the factory was destroyed by the German

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the German Army (1935–1945), ''Heer'' (army), the ''Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmac ...

in 1942 and Germany became the biggest exporter of krypton bulbs until the 1990s.

References

4. Stefan L. Wolff, Imre Bródy (1891-1944). Nach wenigen Jahren in Deutschland führte ihn sein Weg zurück nach Ungarn und dabei von der akademischen Physik zur Industrieforschung. 1944 wurde er mit seiner Familie ein Opfer der Shoa, Physik-Journal 21 (2022) Nr. 5, 42-43.

External links

HPO - Imre Bródy (1891 - 1944)
1891 births 1944 deaths 20th-century Hungarian engineers 20th-century Hungarian inventors Hungarian Jews who died in the Holocaust People from Gyula Hungarian people who died in Dachau concentration camp Hungarian civilians killed in World War II {{Hungary-engineer-stub