Per Vilhelm Brüel
| Per Vilhelm Brüel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
March 6, 1915 Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Died | April 2, 2015 (aged 100) |
| Nationality | Danish |
| Alma mater | Technical University of Denmark |
| Occupation | Physicist, Engineer |
| Family | von Brühl |
Per Vilhelm Brüel (March 6, 1915 – April 2, 2015) was a Danish physicist and engineer who pioneered and made fundamental contributions to the development of the physics of sound and vibration. He also formed and founded the world's largest manufacturer and supplier of sound and vibration measurement equipment, systems and solutions, Brüel & Kjær. Brüel was a close friend of Niels Bohr, and despite danger Brüel traveled from Sweden to Denmark during the German occupation with important documents of Bohr's work. Brüel was fluent in Danish, German, English, Swedish, and spoke French and Italian.
Brüel was a descendant of the Brüel branch of the German noble family, the von Brühl family.
Brüel was born in Copenhagen as the eldest son to his family. Brüel's father was a forester, a tradition that he intended his son to continue. However, Brüel did not like the idea of becoming a forester, causing a family scandal.
The family lived in the South of Jutland, away from schools and towns. When Brüel got older, he was sent away for "blacksmith" education, which then denoted a practical education in engineering. But he decided to attend university and reallocated to the technical university in Copenhagen. There Brüel pursued aerodynamics, electronics, and acoustics.
At the Technical University of Denmark, Brüel started working on his Ph.D, which today would be equivalent to master of science, in 1932, and finished it in about five months. Brüel's mentor was P.O. Pedersen, a famous Danish engineer and physicist, and Brüel was handpicked by Pedersen to work with him. Brüel later described Pedersen as brilliant, but that he took credit for Brüel's and his other students' work.
In January 1939, Brüel was drafted into the Danish army to do the radio for the military for a year, and it was there he built his first instrument, a battery-operated, constant-percentage bandwidth analyzer.
In the end of 1942, due to German occupation of Denmark, Brüel went to work in Sweden. He there went on to do important work in both Sweden and Finland, including constructing an acoustic lab at Chalmers University.
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