Rudolf Diesel
| Rudolf Diesel | |
|---|---|
Diesel c. 1900
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| Born |
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel 18 March 1858 Paris, France |
| Died | 29 September 1913 (aged 55) English Channel |
| Cause of death | Unknown (his biographers have considered suicide probable) |
| Resting place | North Sea |
| Residence | Second French Empire |
| Nationality | German |
| Occupation | Engineer, inventor, entrepreneur |
| Employer | Sulzer, Linde, MAN AG, Deutz |
| Known for | Inventing the diesel engine |
| Spouse(s) | Martha Diesel (née Flasche) |
| Children | Rudolf Jr., Heddy and Eugen |
| Parent(s) | Elise Diesel, Theodor Diesel |
| Awards | Elliott Cresson Medal (1901) |
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Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (German: [ˈʁuːdɔlf ˈkʁɪstjan ˈkaʁl ˈdiːzəl]; 18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer, famous for the invention of the diesel engine and his mysterious death. Diesel was the subject of the 1942 film Diesel.
Diesel was born in Paris, France in 1858 the second of three children of Elise (née Strobel) and Theodor Diesel. His parents were Bavarian immigrants living in Paris. Theodor Diesel, a bookbinder by trade, left his home town of Augsburg, Bavaria, in 1848. He met his wife, a daughter of a Nuremberg merchant, in Paris in 1855 and became a leather goods manufacturer there.
Rudolf Diesel spent his early childhood in France, but at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, his family (as were many other Germans) was forced to leave. They settled in London, England. Before the war's end, however, Diesel's mother sent 12-year-old Rudolf to Augsburg to live with his aunt and uncle, Barbara and Christoph Barnickel, to become fluent in German and to visit the Königliche Kreis-Gewerbsschule (Royal County Trade School), where his uncle taught mathematics.
At the age of 14, Diesel wrote a letter to his parents saying that he wanted to become an engineer. After finishing his basic education at the top of his class in 1873, he enrolled at the newly founded Industrial School of Augsburg. Two years later, he received a merit scholarship from the Royal Bavarian Polytechnic of Munich, which he accepted against the wishes of his parents, who would rather have seen him start to work.
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