Karl Mey (March 1879 – May 1945) was a prominent German industrial physicist who directed the research and development branch of Osram AG. His presidency of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, starting the year Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, was crucial in that organization's ability to assert its independence from National Socialist policies.

Education

Mey studied physics and mathematics at the

Humboldt University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

from 1897. He received his doctorate in 1902 under

Emil Warburg Emil Gabriel Warburg (; 9 March 1846 – 28 July 1931) was a German physicist who during his career was professor of physics at the Universities of Strassburg, Freiburg and Berlin. He was president of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft 1899� ...

; his thesis was on the cathode gradient of alkali metals.

Career

After receipt of his doctorate, Mey was employed at the Militärversuchsamt Tegel and then at the

Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft ; AEG) was a German producer of electrical equipment. It was established in 1883 by Emil Rathenau as the ''Deutsche Edison-Gesellschaft für angewandte Elektricität'' in Berlin. The company's initial focus was driven by electrical lighting, ...

, where he specialized in research and development of

incandescent light bulb An incandescent light bulb, also known as an incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe, is an electric light that produces illumination by Joule heating a #Filament, filament until it incandescence, glows. The filament is enclosed in a ...

s. He became head of the AEG light bulb factory in 1909.Hentschel, 1996, Appendix F; see the entry for Karl Mey. During

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, from 1914 to 1917, he served in the infantry and saw action at the Western Front. After the war, Mey was again employed at AEG. After the merger of AEG, the Auer Company, and

Siemens & Halske 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 Geor ...

into Osram AG in Berlin, he supervised the whole research and development branch. Mey was active in a number of professional organizations and held offices in them. Circa 1931, he became vice-chairman of the Deutsche Glastechnische Gesellschaft (German Technical Glass Society). From 1931 to 1945, he was president of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für technische Physik (German Society for Technical Physics). During the period 1933 to 1935, he was the president of the

Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft The German Physical Society (German: , DPG) is the oldest organisation of physicists. As of 2022, the DPG's worldwide membership is cited as 52,220, making it one of the largest national physics societies in the world. The DPG's membership peaked ...

(Acronym: DPG; translation: German Physical Society.). With Mey being elected president of the DPG during the year that

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...

became Chancellor of Germany, as opposed to the Nobel Laureate

Johannes Stark Johannes Stark (; 15 April 1874 – 21 June 1957) was a German physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1919 "for his discovery of the Doppler effect in canal rays and the splitting of spectral lines in electric fields". This phenom ...

, who was a supporter of the

anti-Semitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

Deutsche Physik ''Deutsche Physik'' (, "German Physics") or Aryan Physics () was a nationalist movement in the German physics community in the early 1930s which had the support of many eminent physicists in Germany. The term appears in the title of a four- ...

, the DPG asserted its independence from slavishly following

National Socialist Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During Hitler's rise to power, it was frequen ...

policies. In May 1945, Mey was arrested by Russian forces as a “leading military industrialist” and deported to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Selected Literature

*Karl Mey ''Über das Kathodengefälle der Alkalimetalle'', ''Annalen der Physik'' Volume 316, Issue 5, pp. 127–145 (1903)Harvard Abstracts
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Selected Patents

*Patent for: Electric lamp. Patent number: 2208998. Filing date: 8 November 1937. Issue date: July 1940. Inventor: Karl Mey. Assignee: General Electric Company, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany.

Bibliography

*Hentschel, Klaus, editor and Ann M. Hentschel, editorial assistant and Translator ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) *Hoffmann, Dieter ''Between Autonomy and Accommodation: The German Physical Society during the Third Reich'', ''Physics in Perspective'' 7(3) 293-329 (2005)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mey, Karl 1879 births 1945 deaths 20th-century German physicists Humboldt University of Berlin alumni German people who died in Soviet detention German Army personnel of World War I