Rudolf Heinz Pose (10 April 1905 – 13 November 1975) 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 ...
nuclear physicist who worked in the
Soviet atomic bomb project.
He did pioneering work which contributed to the understanding nuclear energy levels. He worked on the German nuclear energy project ''
Uranverein''. After
World War II, the
Soviet Union sent him to establish and head Laboratory V in
Obninsk
Obninsk (russian: О́бнинск) is a city in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the bank of the Protva River southwest of Moscow and northeast of Kaluga. Population:
History
The history of Obninsk began in 1945 when the First Research I ...
. From 1957, he was at the ''Joint Institute for Nuclear Research'' in
Dubna
Dubna ( rus, Дубна́, p=dʊbˈna) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It has a status of ''naukograd'' (i.e. town of science), being home to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, an international nuclear physics research center and one o ...
,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eight ...
. He settled in
East Germany in 1959, and he held teaching posts and directed nuclear physics institutes at ''
Technische Hochschule Dresden''.
Education
Pose studied
physics,
mathematics, and
chemistry at the
University of Königsberg, the
University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operati ...
, the
University of Göttingen
The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded i ...
, and the
University of Halle-Wittenberg
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg (german: Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), also referred to as MLU, is a public, research-oriented university in the cities of Halle and Wittenberg and the largest and oldest university ...
. He received his doctorate at Halle, in 1928, under the
Nobel laureate in Physics
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...
Gustav Hertz
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.
Biography
Hertz was born in Hamb ...
.
[Seeliger, 2005.]
Career
Early years
From 1928 Pose was an unsalaried assistant and from 1930 a regular assistant to the physicist
Gerhard Hoffmann
Gerhard Hoffmann (4 August 1880 – 18 June 1945) was a German nuclear physicist. During World War II, he contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club.
Education
Hoffmann studied at the University of Götting ...
, who was doing research in nuclear reaction measurements.
[Catalogus Professorum Halensis]
Pose
. In 1929, Pose studied the nuclear reactions of aluminum nuclei bombarded with alpha particles. His experiments showed the existence of discrete energy levels in the nucleus. His pioneering work described for the first time the effect of resonance transformation in a nuclear process. On the basis of these works and his
Habilitation, Pose was awarded a teaching contract for atomic physics in 1934. He continued to study these nuclear reactions in other light (low atomic number) nuclei through the 1930s. In 1939, he was awarded an unscheduled/adjunct (''außerplanmäßige'') professorship at Halle.
During World War II, Pose was delegated to various organizations to carry on nuclear research and development activities. From 1940, he worked for the ''
Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft's'' ''Institut für Physik'' (KWIP,
Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics
The Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Advancement of Science (German: ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften'') was a German scientific institution established in the German Empire in 1911. Its functions were taken over by ...
) on the German nuclear energy project ''
Uranverein''. He worked with Werner Maurer on proof of spontaneous neutron emission of
uranium and
thorium. From 1942, he was at the
Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt
The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is the national metrology institute of the Federal Republic of Germany, with scientific and technical service tasks. It is a higher federal authority and a public-law institution directly under f ...
, where
Abraham Esau
Robert Abraham Esau (7 June 1884 – 12 May 1955) was a German physicist.
After receipt of his doctorate from the University of Berlin, Esau worked at Telefunken, where he pioneered very high frequency (VHF) waves used in radar, radio, and tele ...
was President, and also held the title of Plenipotentiary (''Bevollmächtiger'') for Nuclear Physics - as such, he controlled German nuclear research. Some of the research was carried out at the ''Versuchsstelle'' (testing station) of the ''
Heereswaffenamt
''Waffenamt'' (WaA) was the German Army Weapons Agency. It was the centre for research and development of the Weimar Republic and later the Third Reich for weapons, ammunition and army equipment to the German Reichswehr
''Reichswehr'' () ...
'' (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) in Gottow;
Kurt Diebner
Kurt Diebner (13 May 1905 – 13 July 1964) was a German nuclear physicist who is well known for directing and administrating the German nuclear energy project, a secretive program aiming to build nuclear weapons for Nazi Germany during World War ...
, was director of the facility. The testing station is where Pose and
Ernst Rexer compared the effectiveness of neutron production in a paraffin-moderated reactor using uranium plates, rods, and cubes. Internal reports (See section below: Internal Reports.) on their activities were classified Top Secret and had limited distribution. The G-1 experiment performed at the HWA testing station had lattices of 6,800 uranium oxide cubes (about 25 tons) in the neutron moderator paraffin. Their work verified
Karl Heinz Höcker's calculations that cubes were better than rods, and rods were better than plates. In June 1944, he went to the Physics Institute of the
University of Leipzig to work on
cyclotron
A cyclotron is a type of particle accelerator invented by Ernest O. Lawrence in 1929–1930 at the University of California, Berkeley, and patented in 1932. Lawrence, Ernest O. ''Method and apparatus for the acceleration of ions'', filed: Jan ...
development.
In Russia
Near the close of World War II, the
Soviet Union sent special search teams into Germany to locate and deport German nuclear scientists or any others who could be of use to the
Soviet atomic bomb project. The
Russian Alsos
The Soviet Alsos or Russian Alsos is the western codename for an operation that took place during 19451946 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, in order to exploit German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, material resourc ...
teams were headed by
NKVD Colonel General A. P. Zavenyagin and staffed with numerous scientists, from their only nuclear laboratory, attired in NKVD officer's uniforms. In the autumn of 1945, Pose was offered the opportunity to work in the Soviet Union, which he accepted. He arrived in the Soviet Union, with his family, in February 1946. He was to establish and head Laboratory V (also known by the code name Malojaroslavets-10, after the nearby town by the same name) in
Obninsk
Obninsk (russian: О́бнинск) is a city in Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the bank of the Protva River southwest of Moscow and northeast of Kaluga. Population:
History
The history of Obninsk began in 1945 when the First Research I ...
. The scientific staff at Laboratory V was to be both Russian and German, the former being mostly political prisoners from the
Gulag
The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...
or exiles; this type of facility is known as a
sharashka
A Special Design Bureau (, ''osoboje konstruktorskoe bûro''; ОКБ), commonly informally known as a ''sharashka'' (russian: шара́шка, ; sometimes ''sharaga'', ''sharazhka'') was any of several secret research and development laboratories ...
. (
Laboratory B in Sungul' was also a sharashka and its personnel worked on the Soviet atomic bomb project. Notable Germans at Laboratory B were
Hans-Joachim Born Hans-Joachim Born (8 May 1909 – 15 April 1987) was a German radiochemist trained and educated at the ''Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Chemie''. Up to the end of World War II, he worked in Nikolaj Vladimirovich Timofeev-Resovskij's ''Abteilung f ...
,
Alexander Catsch,
Nikolaus Riehl
Nikolaus Riehl (24 May 1901 – 2 August 1990) was a German nuclear physicist. He was head of the scientific headquarters of Auergesellschaft. When the Russians entered Berlin near the end of World War II, he was invited to the Soviet Union, w ...
, and
Karl Zimmer. Notable Russians from the Gulag were
N. V. Timofeev-Resovskij and S. A. Voznesenskij.)
[Oleynikov, 2000, 14.]
On 5 March 1946, in order to staff his laboratory, Pose and NKVD General Kravchenko, along with two other officers, went to Germany for six months to hire scientists. Additionally, Pose procured equipment from the companies
AEG
Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft AG (AEG; ) was a German producer of electrical equipment founded in Berlin as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in 1883 by Emil Rathenau. During the Second World War, ...
,
Zeiss Zeiss or Zeiß may refer to:
People
*Carl Zeiss (1816–1888), German optician and entrepreneur
*Emil Zeiß (1833–1910), German Protestant minister and painter
Companies
*Carl Zeiss AG, German manufacturer of optics, industrial measurem ...
,
Schott Jena, and Mansfeld, which were in the Soviet occupation zone.
Pose planned 16 laboratories for his institute, which was to include a chemistry laboratory and eight laboratories. Three heads of laboratories, Czulius, Herrmann, and Rexer, were Pose's colleagues who worked with him at the German Army's testing station in Gottow, under the ''Uranverein'' project. (See below: Internal Reports.) Eight laboratories in the institute were:
*Heinz Pose's laboratory for nuclear processes
*Werner Czulius's laboratory for uranium reactors
*
Walter Herrmann's laboratory for special issues of nuclear disintegration
*Westmayer's laboratory for systematic nuclear reactions
*Professor Carl Friedrich Weiss's laboratory for the study of natural and artificial radioactivity
*Schmidt's laboratory to study methodologies for nuclear measurement
*Professor
Ernst Rexer's laboratory for applied nuclear physics
*Hans Jürgen von Oertzen's laboratory to study cyclotrons and high voltage
Although many eminent German scientists went willingly to the Soviet Union, including
Manfred von Ardenne,
Heinz Barwich
Heinz Barwich (22 July 1911 – 10 April 1966) was a German nuclear physicist. He was deputy director of the Siemens Research Laboratory II in Berlin. At the close of World War II, he followed the decision of Gustav Hertz, to go to the Sov ...
,
Gustav Hertz
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.
Biography
Hertz was born in Hamb ...
,
Nikolaus Riehl
Nikolaus Riehl (24 May 1901 – 2 August 1990) was a German nuclear physicist. He was head of the scientific headquarters of Auergesellschaft. When the Russians entered Berlin near the end of World War II, he was invited to the Soviet Union, w ...
,
Peter Adolf Thiessen
Peter Adolf Thiessen (6 April 1899 – 5 March 1990) was a German physical chemist. He voluntarily went to the Soviet Union at the close of World War II, and he received high Soviet decorations and the Stalin Prize for contributions to the ...
, and
Max Volmer
Max Volmer (; 3 May 1885 – 3 June 1965) was a German physical chemist, who made important contributions in electrochemistry, in particular on electrode kinetics. He co-developed the Butler–Volmer equation. Volmer held the chair and directo ...
, the Russians were not above intimidation and heavy-handed techniques. It must have been highly intimidating to be invited to work in the Soviet Union by a uniformed (
NKVD) officer of a conquering military force, especially in the wake of the devastation and brutality of the
Battle of Berlin
The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of World War II.
After the Vistula–O ...
, one of the
bloodiest conflicts in the closing months of the war and history itself. On the other end of the spectrum, the heavy-handed techniques were clearly demonstrated on a large scale, such as in
Operation Osoaviakhim
Operation Osoaviakhim ()
was a secret Soviet operation under which more than 2,500 former Nazi German specialists
(; i.e. scientists, engineers and technicians who worked in specialist areas)
from companies and institutions relevant to military ...
in late 1946. Since Pose was on the staff of the German nuclear energy project ''Uranverein'', he had intimate knowledge of scientists who would be useful as staff and laboratory heads in his facility in Obninsk. This included personnel such as Rexer, Herrmann, and Czulius, who worked with Pose at the German Army's testing station in Gottow, under the ''Uranverein'' project, and had co-authored a classified nuclear energy report (see below) with him. Czulius, long after the war, remembered how an armed guard invited him to meet with an important Russian general in Berlin. When he got to Berlin, Czulius was told that the general was in Moscow, and he was sent there. When he got to Moscow, Czulius was informed that the general was busy, so he should get to work immediately, which he did.
While in Germany on his recruiting trip, Pose wrote a letter to the
Physics Nobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg
Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a Über quantentheoretische Umdeutung kinematis ...
inviting him to work in Russia. The letter lauded the working conditions in Russian and the available resources, as well as the favorable attitude of the Russians towards German scientists. A courier hand delivered the recruitment letter to Heisenberg; Heisenberg politely declined in a return letter to Pose.
In 1947, Alexander Leipunski, scientific liaison of the Ninth Chief Directorate of the
NKVD since 1946, was assigned to Laboratory V. He eventually became the scientific director of the Institute of Power and Power Engineering, which was founded on the basis of Laboratory V. The Reactor Section of the Scientific Council of the First Chief Directorate of the NKVD, in May, assigned Leipunski and Laboratory V the tasking to develop nuclear reactors with
beryllium
Beryllium is a chemical element with the symbol Be and atomic number 4. It is a steel-gray, strong, lightweight and brittle alkaline earth metal. It is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form ...
as a neutron moderator. Later, Laboratory V was charged with the development of a gas-cooled reactor using enriched uranium and beryllium as a moderator. Laboratory V was also assigned tasking for the studies of radiation biology and separation of radio isotopes, similar to the tasking given
Nikolaus Riehl's Laboratory B in Sungul'.
Other personnel in Pose's Laboratory V were Wolfgang Burkhardt, Dr. Baroni, Dr. Ernst Busse, Dr. Hans Keppel, Dr. Willi Haupt, Dr.
Karl-Heinrich Riewe, Dr. Eng. Herbert Thieme (formerly with
Nikolaus Riehl
Nikolaus Riehl (24 May 1901 – 2 August 1990) was a German nuclear physicist. He was head of the scientific headquarters of Auergesellschaft. When the Russians entered Berlin near the end of World War II, he was invited to the Soviet Union, w ...
at Plant No. 12 in
Ehlektrostal'), Dr. Hans Gerhard Krüger (formerly with
Gustav Hertz
Gustav Ludwig Hertz (; 22 July 1887 – 30 October 1975) was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his work on inelastic electron collisions in gases, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.
Biography
Hertz was born in Hamb ...
at Institute G), Dr. Helene Külz, Dr. Hellmut Scheffers, and Dr. Renger.
In 1952, most of the German scientists left Laboratory V for a facility in
Sukhumi, where they remained in quarantine until returning to Germany in 1955. However, Pose remained at Laboratory V until 1955, when he then went to the Laboratory for Nuclear Problems, now the
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, in
Dubna
Dubna ( rus, Дубна́, p=dʊbˈna) is a town in Moscow Oblast, Russia. It has a status of ''naukograd'' (i.e. town of science), being home to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, an international nuclear physics research center and one o ...
.
In 1957, while still at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Pose became a professor for special areas of nuclear physics at ''
Technische Hochschule Dresden''.
[Maddrell, 2006, 199.]
In East Germany
In 1959 Pose returned to Germany and settled in Dresden,
East Germany. In addition to continuing his teaching at the ''Technische Hochschule'', he became the first director of the ''Instituts für Allgemeine Kerntechnik'' (Institute for General Nuclear Technology), whose chair for Neutron Physics of Reactors he also took over. At the same time, he became Dean of the Faculty for Nuclear Technology, which was created in 1955.
After closing the Faculty for Nuclear Technology in 1962, Pose transferred to the directorship of the ''Institut für experimentelle Kernphysik'' (Institute for Experimental Nuclear Physics) and the teaching chair of the same name at the ''Technische Hochschule''. He held these positions until 1970.
Declined defection
At the close of World War II, Pose's brother, Werner, was a prisoner of war of the Russians. Pose arranged for Werner to be transferred to Obninsk and he employed Werner as a technician in Laboratory V.
When released from the Soviet Union in 1953, Werner, returned to Germany. Since his family lived in
West Germany, he was sent there. Werner passed through the Friedland Camp upon entering West Germany. There, the Scientific and Technical Intelligence Branch (STIB) of the
Control Commission for Germany - British Element (CCG/BE), recognized his potential and took an interest in him. So did the "Org", the
Gehlen Organization, which would later become the
Bundesnachrichtendienst
The Federal Intelligence Service (German: ; , BND) is the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, directly subordinate to the Chancellor's Office. The BND headquarters is located in central Berlin and is the world's largest intelligence h ...
(BND, West German Federal Intelligence Service). Werner was eventually used by the
CIA
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...
to try to induce Pose to defect to the United States in 1958. Pose rebuffed the attempt.
[Maddrell, 2006, 199-200.]
The Org and STIB had an interest in a chemist in Obninsk who Werner knew. When the chemist was allowed to go to Germany in 1955, Werner introduced the chemist to representatives from the Org and STIB. Unfortunately for Werner, the chemist had been recruited by the ''Ministerium für Staatssicherheit'' (MfS, Ministry for State Security) of East Germany. This eventually resulted in Werner being arrested by the MfS when he tried to cross over into East Germany. Werner was tried in April 1959 and sentenced to six years in prison.
Honors
*1943 –
Kriegsverdienstkreuz, 2. Klasse
Internal reports
The following reports were published in ''
Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte
''Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte'' (''Research Reports in Nuclear Physics'') was an internal publication of the German '' Uranverein'', which was initiated under the ''Heereswaffenamt'' (Army Ordnance Office) in 1939; in 1942, supervision of ...
'' (''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
The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and United States military, scientific, and intelligence personnel to discover enemy scientific developments during World War II. Its chief focus was on the German nuclear energy pr ...
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
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...
.
*F. Berkei, W. Borrmann, W. Czulius, Kurt Diebner, Georg Hartwig, K. H. Höcker, W. Herrmann, H. Pose, and Ernst Rexer ''Bericht über einen Würfelversuch mit Uranoxyd und Paraffin'' (dated before 26 November 1942). G-125.
[Hentschel and Hentschel, 1996, 373.][Walker, 1993, 271.]
*Heinz Pose and Ernst Rexer ''Versuche mit verschiedenen geometrischen Anordnungen von Uranoxyd und Paraffin'' (12 October 1943). G-240.
Selected literature
*Heinz Pose ''Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Diffusion langsamer Elektronen in Edelgasen'' ''Zeitschrift für Physik'', Volume 52, Issue 5-6, 428-447 (1929)
*Heinz Pose ''Messung einzelner Korpuskularstrahlen bei Anwesenheit intensiver Gamma - Strahlen'', ''Zschr. Physik'' Volume 102, Numbers 5 & 6, 379-407 (1936)
*Rudolph H. Pose ''Vospominanija ob Obninske'' (''Reminiscences of Obninsk'') in ''History of the Soviet Atomic Project - 1996, Proceedings 2'' (IzdAt, 1999)
Books
*Heinz Pose ''Einführung in die Physik des Atomkerns'' (
Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1971)
Bibliography
*Catalogus Professorum Halensi
Heinz Pose*Hentschel, Klaus (editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (editorial assistant and translator) ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996)
*Maddrell, Paul ''Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945–1961'' (Oxford, 2006)
*Oleynikov, Pavel V. ''German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project'', ''The Nonproliferation Review'' Volume 7, Number 2, 1 – 3
(2000) The author has been a group leader at the Institute of Technical Physics of the Russian Federal Nuclear Center in
Snezhinsk
Snezhinsk ( rus, Сне́жинск, p=ˈsnʲeʐɨnsk) is a closed town in Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. Population:
History
The settlement began in 1955 as Residential settlement number 2, a name which it had until 1957 when it received town ...
(Chelyabinsk-70).
*Seeliger, Dieter ''Der Schöpfer des Labors »W« hätte Jubiläum'', ''Dresdner Universitäts Journal'' 5 April 2005, p. 12
Pose– Technical University Dresden, Honoring Pose's 100th Birthday
*Walker, Mark ''German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949'' (Cambridge, 1993)
See also
*
Russian Alsos
The Soviet Alsos or Russian Alsos is the western codename for an operation that took place during 19451946 in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, in order to exploit German atomic related facilities, intellectual materials, material resourc ...
Notes
External links
*
Pose– Catalogus Professorum Halensis
Pose Centenary– ''Dresdner Universitäts Journal'' 5 April 2005
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pose, Heinz
East German scientists
German expatriates in the Soviet Union
20th-century German physicists
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg alumni
Nuclear program of Nazi Germany
Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union
Scientists from Königsberg
University of Göttingen alumni
University of Königsberg alumni
1905 births
1988 deaths