Gernot Zippe
| Gernott Zippe | |
|---|---|
| Born | November 1917 Warnsdorf, Austria-Hungary |
| Died |
7 May 2008 (aged 90) Vienna, Austria |
| Residence | Vienna, Austria |
| Citizenship | Austria-Hungary (1917–1930) Germany (1930–1960) Austria (1960–2008) |
| Nationality | German-Austrian |
| Fields | Mechanical Engineering |
| Institutions |
Luftwaffe Physics-Technical at Bundesanstalt Tomsk-7 Uranium Laboratories University of Virginia (United States) |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna |
| Known for |
Zippe uranium centrifuges German nuclear weapons project Soviet nuclear program |
Gernot Zippe PhD (November 1917 – 7 May 2008) was an Austrian-German mechanical engineer who is widely credited with leading the team which developed the Zippe-type centrifuge, a centrifuge machine for the collection of Uranium-235.
Zippe was born in Varnsdorf, Austria-Hungary (nowadays Czech Republic) in 1917. Zippe studied and graduated with B.Sc. Physics at the University of Vienna in the '1938, and served in the Luftwaffe as a flight instructor and a researcher on radar and airplane propellers. In 1941, Zippe received his B.S. in mechanical engineering, and M.Sc. in 1943 in the same discipline. While doing his post doctoral research at the University of Vienna, Zippe participated in Germany's nuclear weapons project in 1940s. He was the junior research team member of the isotope separation project led by Klaus Clusius at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. In 1945, he was awarded a PhD in mechanical engineering with emphasizing on thermal column and its applicant physics. By the time Zippe fully joined the project as the team leader, communist spies kidnapped him, along with other technically skilled scientists and engineers, and imprisoned him in a special camp where he led a team that worked on centrifuge research for the Soviet Union. In the Soviet Union Zippe worked at the Physics Institute of Sukhumi on a centrifuge project, led by German director Manfred von Ardenne, and directed by another German scientist Max Steenbeck, whose theoretical achievements Zippe used. He was allowed to leave in 1956, and returned to Vienna.
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