- Heinz Haber
Heinz Haber (
May 15 ,1913 –February 13 ,1990 ) was a Germanphysicist and science writer who primarily became famous for his TV programs and books about physics and environmental subjects. His lucid style of explaining hard science has frequently been imitated by later popular science presenters in Germany likeJoachim Bublath but rarely surpassed.After studying physics in
Heidelberg andBerlin and obtaining his doctorate, Haber served inWorld War II for the GermanLuftwaffe as a reconnaissance aviator until 1942. He returned to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik and after the war lectured at Heidelberg. 1946 he emigrated to the U.S., as many German scientists did after the war, and joined the USAF School of Aviation Medicine atRandolph Air Force Base . Together with fellow GermanHubertus Strughold , he and his brother Dr. Fritz Haber (April 3, 1912 - August 21, 1998) made pioneering research intospace medicine in the late 1940s. The brothers proposed parabolic flights for simulatingweightlessness . 1952 he became associate physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the 1950s, he also worked as a scientific consultant forThe Walt Disney Company .In the 1960s and 1970s, he was Germany's premier capacity in
popular science and wrote magazine columns and numerous books and presented his own TV programs like "Professor Haber experimentiert", "Das Mathematische Kabinett", "Unser blauer Planet", "Stirbt unser blauer Planet?", "Professor Haber berichtet", and "WAS IST WAS mit Professor Haber". He was founding editor of the German science magazine "bild der wissenschaft" from 1964 to 1990. His memorable experiments included one where the onset of anuclear chain reaction was simulated with hundreds ofmouse trap s, each one having been loaded with twoping pong balls.Heinz Haber had an unparalleled capability for presenting hard scientific facts in a manner and language which was understandable and entertaining for the layman without being sloppy. This won him many accolades, such as the
Adolf-Grimme-Preis and theGoldene Kamera .Heinz Haber has two children, Kai (* 1943) and Cathleen (* 1945), from his first marriage, and a third child, Marc (* 1969), from the second. His first wife Anneliese lives in Tucson, Arizona, his second wife Irmgard in Hamburg, Germany.
External links
* [http://home.arcor.de/mdoege/verhext/ VERHEXT] — a 1960s puzzle game by Heinz Haber based on
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