Erich Bagge

Erich Rudolf Bagge (30 May 1912 – 5 June 1996), German scientist. Bagge, a student of Werner Heisenberg for his doctorate [ 1938 Doctorate: "Beiträge zur Theorie der schweren Atomkerne". See [http://www.archiv.uni-leipzig.de/heisenberg/Textarchiv/11.htm Archive] - Leipzig University.] and Habilitation, [ 1941 Habilitation: "Kernzertrümmerungen und schwere Teilchen in der kosmischen Strahlung". See [http://www.archiv.uni-leipzig.de/heisenberg/Textarchiv/11.htm Archive] - Leipzig University.] was engaged in German Atomic Energy research and the German nuclear energy project during the Second World War. He worked as an Assistant at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik in Berlin. Bagge, who became associated professor at the University of Hamburg in 1948, was in particular involved in the usage of nuclear power for trading vessels, and he was one of the founders of the Society for the Usage of Nuclear Energy in Ship-Building and Seafare. The first German nuclear vessel, the "Otto Hahn", was launched in 1962. A research reactor was installed in Geesthacht near Hamburg at about the same time which has over the years formed into a center for materials research with neutrons.

Uranium enrichment

Dr Bagge developed a gaseous uranium device (Isotopenschleuse) for enriching uranium radioactivity in 1944. Constructor was BAMAG-MEGUIN in order of Kurt Diebner.
Yellow cake uranium powder was mixed with hydrofluoric acid to form uranium hexafluoride. It was pumped into a sluice and spun at great speeds to fling heavier non-radioactive U238 to the outside. Electromagnets helped to keep U235 nearer the core of the centrifuge. Slight heating near the bottom of the "bowl" helped U238 to migrate to the bottom whilst U235 bubbled to the top of the chamber. U-235 was then sluiced off the top layers. In 1955 Bagge got a patent for the isotope sluice but it never achieved any economic importance.

Post-war activity

From June to December 1945, Bagge was (together with Kurt Diebner, Walther Gerlach, Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck, Werner Heisenberg, Horst Korsching, Max von Laue, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, and Karl Wirtz) detained at Farm Hall near Cambridge, England. After the war, Bagge became Professor in Hamburg, later Professor and Head of the Department of Physics at the University of Kiel, Germany. He was also Head of the Gesellschaft für Kernenergieverwertung in Schiffbau und Schiffahrt (GKSS) near Hamburg.

See also

*Sir Charles Frank (ed), Operation Epsilon. The Farm Hall Transcripts, Bristol and Philadelphia 1993
*Rainer Karlsch, Hitlers Bombe, DVA München 2005, ISBN 3-421-05809-1 [http://www.petermann-heiko.de/aktuelles/buch.php]

Notes