Max Knoll (17 July 1897 – 6 November 1969) was a German electrical engineer. Knoll was born in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

and studied in

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and ...

and at the Technical University of Berlin, where he obtained his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''l ...

in the Institute for High Voltage Technology. In 1927 he became the leader of the electron research group there, where he and his co-worker, Ernst Ruska, invented the

electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a hi ...

in 1931.Ernst Ruska Nobel Prize autobiography
/ref> In April 1932, Knoll joined Telefunken in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitu ...

to do developmental work in the field of

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...

design. He was also a private lecturer in Berlin. After

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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Knoll joined the University of Munich as extraordinary professor and director of the Institute for Electromedicine. He moved to the USA in 1948, to work at the Department of Electrical Engineering at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. In 1956 he returned to Munich and engaged in a series of experiments at the Technische Hochschule, involving the generation of phosphenes by electrically stimulating the brains of himself and other subjects. He retired in 1966.

References

* Knoll, Max & Kügler, J. (1959). "Subjective Light Pattern Spectroscopy in the Electroencephalic Range". ''Nature'' (London) 184:1823–1824. 1897 births 1969 deaths Engineering educators German electrical engineers Knoll, Max Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich faculty Microscopists Princeton University faculty Technical University of Munich alumni Technical University of Munich faculty Technical University of Berlin alumni Scientists from Wiesbaden Engineers from Hesse {{Germany-engineer-stub

See also

References