Max Steenbeck

Max Christian Theodor Steenbeck (21 March 1904 in Kiel – 15 December 1981 in East Berlin) was a German physicist who worked at the Siemens-Schuckertwerke in his early career, during which time he invented the betatron in 1934. He was taken to the Soviet Union after World War II, and he contributed to the Soviet atomic bomb project. In 1955, he returned to East Germany to continue a career in nuclear physics.

Steenbeck studied physics and chemistry at the University of Kiel from 1922 to 1927. He completed his thesis on x-rays under Walther Kossel; he submitted the thesis in 1927/1928 and his doctorate was awarded in January 1929. While a student at Kiel, he formulated the concept of the cyclotron.

From 1927 to 1945, Steenbeck was a physicist at the Siemens-Schuckertwerke in Berlin. From 1934, he was a laboratory director, and it was in that year that he submitted a patent for the betatron. In 1943, he was appointed technical director of a static converter plant at Siemens, conducting research in gas-discharge physics. Additionally, at his plant, he was head of the Volkssturm (peoples’ army), the organized civilian resistance at the plant, which was to, as a last resort, defend the territory.

At the close of World War II he was arrested by the Soviet military forces, and he was incarcerated at a concentration camp in Poznań. He wrote to the NKVD and explained his scientific background. Eventually, he was taken to recuperate at the dacha Opalicha at the end of 1945, after which he was sent to work at Manfred von Ardenne’s Institute A, in Sinop, a suburb of Sukhumi. He headed a group working on both electromagnetic and centrifugal isotope separation for the enrichment of uranium, with the latter having the highest priority. Steenbeck and his group were pioneers in the development of supercritical centrifuges. Steenbeck’s group, at its largest, included from 60 to 100 German and Russian personnel. Steenbeck was kept in the Soviet Union until 1956, when he went to East Germany.

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