Kurt Magnus (September 8, 1912 - December 12, 2003) was a German scientist, expert in the field of
applied mechanics
Applied mechanics is the branch of science concerned with the motion of any substance that can be experienced or perceived by humans without the help of instruments. In short, when mechanics concepts surpass being theoretical and are applied and e ...
, a pioneer of
mechatronics, modern navigation technology and
inertial sensors.
[Gedenktafel für Prof. Kurt Magnus enthüllt. Pionier der Mechatronik für sein Lebenswerk geehrt]
Technische Universität München
The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences.
Establis ...
, July 20, 2018[Werner Schiehlen]
"From cybernetics to mechatronics: Seven decades of interdisciplinary engineering"
PAMM · Proc. Appl. Math. Mech., vol. 19, 2019, pp. 1-4,
Kurt Magnus earned his doctorate in 1937 from the
Georg-August University in
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) 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. At the end of 2019, t ...
in the field of "force-coupled gyroscopes". In 1942 Magnus habilitated on the subject of "General movements of rigid bodies in moving reference systems".
[
By the end 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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
during the Soviet Operation Osoaviakhim (a secret operation, which was part of the Soviet WWII reparations), on October 22 1946 he was shipped to the Soviet Union where he worked until 1953 at a secret facility codenamed NII-88 (NII stands in Russian for research&development institute) at its branch located on the Gorodomlya