Technical University of Berlin

Technical University of Berlin

Technische Universität Berlin
Motto	Wir haben die Ideen für die Zukunft (German)
Motto in English	We have ideas for the future[1]
Type	Public
Established	1946 1770/1799/1879
Endowment	State:€295.7M (2014)[2] External: €174M (2013)[2]
President	Christian Thomsen (since 2014)
Administrative staff	8,070 (2012)[2]
Students	33,933 (WS 2015/16)[2]
Location	Berlin, Germany 52°30′43″N 13°19′35″E / 52.51194°N 13.32639°E / 52.51194; 13.32639Coordinates: 52°30′43″N 13°19′35″E / 52.51194°N 13.32639°E / 52.51194; 13.32639
Campus	Urban
Nobel Laureates	10[3][4][5]
Nickname	TU Berlin, TUB
Affiliations	TIME, TU9 EUA, CESAER, DFG, SEFI, PEGASUS
Website	www.tu-berlin.de

The Technische Universität Berlin, known as TU Berlin and unofficially as the Technical University of Berlin, is a research university located in Berlin, Germany. It was founded in 1879 and became one of the most prestigious education institutions in Europe. It has one of the highest proportions of international students in Germany, almost 20 % were enrolled in 2016.

The TU Berlin is a member of TU9, an incorporated society of the largest and most notable German institutes of technology and of the Top Industrial Managers for Europe network,^[6] which allows for student exchanges between leading engineering schools. It belongs to the Conference of European Schools for Advanced Engineering Education and Research.^[7] The TU Berlin is home of two innovation centers designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.

The university is known for its highly ranked engineering programmes, especially in mechanical engineering and engineering management.^[8] The university alumni and professor list include US National Academies members,^[9] two National Medal of Science laureates^[10][11] and ten Nobel Prize winners.^[3][5][12]

History

The Bauakademie, founded in 1799, was a forerunner of the Technical University of Berlin.

On 1 April 1879, the Königlich Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg ("TH Charlottenburg") was formed in the governmental merger of the Berlin Building Academy (Bauakademie) and the Royal Trade Academy (Königliche Gewerbeakademie), two independent Prussian founding colleges established in 1799 and 1821 respectively.

The TH Charlottenburg (Royal Technical Higher School of Charlottenburg) was named after the borough of its location in Charlottenburg just outside Berlin. In 1899, the TH Charlottenburg became the first polytechnic in Germany awarding doctorates, as a standard degree for the graduates, in addition to diplomas, thanks to professor Alois Riedler and Adolf Slaby, chairman of the Association of German Engineers (VDI) and the Association for Electrical, Electronic and Information Technologies (VDE).

Northern front of the Königlich Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg (Royal Technical School Charlottenburg) in 1895.

In 1916 the long-standing Bergakademie Berlin, the Prussian mining academy created by the geologist Carl Abraham Gerhard in 1770 at the behest of King Frederick the Great, was assimilated into the TH Charlottenburg. Beforehand, the mining college had been, however, for several decades under the auspices of the Frederick William University (now Humboldt University of Berlin), before it was spun out again in 1860.

After Charlottenburg's absorption into Greater Berlin in 1920 and Germany being turned into Weimar Republic, the TH Charlottenburg was renamed "Technische Hochschule of Berlin" ("TH Berlin"). In 1927, the Department of Geodesy of the Agricultural College of Berlin was incorporated into the TH Berlin. During the 1930s, the redevelopment and expansion of the campus along the "East-West axis" were part of the Nazi plans of a Welthauptstadt Germania, including a new faculty of defense technology under General Karl Becker, built as a part of the greater academic town (Hochschulstadt) in the adjacent west-wise Grunewald forest. The shell construction remained unfinished after the outbreak of World War II and after Becker's suicide in 1940, it is today covered by the large-scale Teufelsberg dumping.

Main building of TU Berlin in 2010

The north section of the main building of the university was destroyed during a bombing raid in November 1943.^[13] Due to the street fighting at the end of the Second World War, the operations at the TH Berlin were suspended as of April, 20th 1945. Planning for the re-opening of the school began on June, 2nd 1945, once the acting rectorship led by Gustav Ludwig Hertz and Max Volmer was appointed. As both Hertz and Volmer remained in exile in the Soviet Union for some time to come, the college was not re-inaugurated until April, 9th 1946, now bearing the name of "Technische Universität Berlin".

Since 2009 the TU Berlin houses two Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KIC) designated by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology.^[14]

Campus

The TU Berlin covers 604,000 m², distributed over various locations in Berlin. The main campus is located in the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. The seven schools of the university have some 33,933 students enrolled in 90 subjects (October, 2015).^[15]

El Gouna campus: Technische Universität Berlin has established a satellite campus in Egypt to act as a scientific and academic field office. The nonprofit public-private partnership (PPP) aims to offer services provided by Technische Universität Berlin at the campus in El Gouna on the Red Sea.^[16]

Organization

Telefunken-Highrise, the tallest building on campus.

Since 4 April 2005, the TU Berlin has consisted of the following schools:

• Humanities
• Mathematics and natural sciences
• Process sciences and engineering
• Electrical engineering and computer science
• Mechanical engineering and transport systems (including aerospace engineering, automotive engineering, naval and ocean engineering, and the planning and operation of transport systems)
• Planning – building – environment (merge of former schools of "civil engineering and applied geosciences" and "architecture – environment – society")
• Economics and management

Faculty and staff

Eight-thousand four hundred fifty five people work at the university: 338 professors, 2,598 postgraduate researchers, and 2,131 personnel work in administration, the workshops, the library and the central facilities. In addition there are 2,651 student assistants and 126 trainees (2015).^[17]

International student mobility is applicable through ERASMUS programme or through Top Industrial Managers for Europe (TIME) network.

Library

Entrance of the main library of Berlin Technical University and of the Berlin University of the Arts

The new common main library of Technische Universität Berlin and of the Berlin University of the Arts was opened in 2004^[18] and holds about 2.9 million volumes (2007).^[19] The library building was sponsored partially (estimated 10% of the building costs) by Volkswagen and is named officially "University Library of the TU Berlin and UdK (in the Volkswagen building)".^[20] A source of confusion to many, the letters above the main entrance only state "Volkswagen Bibliothek" (German for "Volkswagen Library") – without any mentioning of the universities.

Some of the former 17 libraries of Technische Universität Berlin and of the nearby University of the Arts were merged into the new library, but several departments still retain libraries of their own. In particular, the school of 'Economics and Management' maintains a library with 340,000 volumes in the university's main building (Die Bibliothek – Wirtschaft & Management/″The Library″ – Economics and Management) and the 'Department of Mathematics' maintains a library with 60,000 volumes in the Mathematics building (Mathematische Fachbibliothek/"Mathematics Library").

Notable alumni and professors

Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), graduate, engineer, designed the first ballistic missile and NASA rockets.

Konrad Zuse (1910–1995), graduate, designed the first modern computer and first high-level programming language

Eugene Paul Wigner (1902–1995), graduate, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1963

Carl Bosch (1874–1940), graduate, Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1931

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781 – 1841), graduate of the Bauakademie, architect

(Including those of the Academies mentioned under History)

• Bruno Ahrends (1878–1948), architect
• Steffen Ahrends (1907–1992), architect
• Stancho Belkovski (1891–1962), Bulgarian architect, head of Higher Technical School in Sofia and the department of public buildings.
• August Borsig (1804–1854), businessman
• Carl Bosch (1874–1940), chemist, Nobel prize winner 1931
• Franz Breisig (1868–1934), mathematician, inventor of the calibration wire and father of the term quadripole network in electrical engineering.
• Wilhelm Cauer (1900–1945), mathematician, essential contributions to the design of filters.
• Henri Marie Coandă (1886–1972), aircraft designer; discovered the Coandă Effect.
• Joachim Milberg (*1943), Former CEO of BMW AG.
• Martin C. Wittig (*1964), Former CEO of the management consultant firm Roland Berger Strategy Consultants.
• Carl Dahlhaus (1928–1989), musicologist.
• George de Hevesy (1885–1966), chemist, Nobel prize winner 1943
• Walter Dornberger (1895–1980), developer of the Air Force-NASA X-20 Dyna-Soar project.
• Ottmar Edenhofer (born 1961), economist
• Krafft Arnold Ehricke (1917–1984), rocket-propulsion engineer, worked for the NASA, chief designer of the Centaur
• Gerhard Ertl (* 10. Oktober 1936 in Stuttgart) Physicist and Surface Chemist, Hon. Prof. and Nobel prize winner 2007
• Gottfried Feder (1883-1941), economist and key member of the National Socialist Party
• Wigbert Fehse (born 1937) German engineer and researcher in the area of automatic space navigation, guidance, control and docking/berthing.
• Dennis Gabor (1900–1971), physicist (holography), Nobel prize winner 1971
• Fritz Gosslau (1898–1965), German engineer, known for his work at the V-1 flying bomb.
• Fritz Haber (1868–1934), chemist, Nobel prize winner 1918.
• Sabine Hark (born 7 August 1962), sociologist and professor of gender studies
• Gustav Ludwig Hertz (1887–1975), physicist, Nobel prize winner 1925
• Olga Holtz (born 1973), mathematician
• Fritz Houtermans (1903–1966) atomic and nuclear physicist
• Hugo Junkers (1859–1935), former of Junkers & Co, a major German aircraft manufacturer.
• Anatol Kagan (1913-2009), Russian-born Australian architect.
• Helmut Kallmeyer (1910–2006), German chemist and Action T4 perpetrator
• Walter Kaufmann (1871–1947), physicist, well known for his first experimental proof of the velocity dependence of mass.
• Diébédo Francis Kéré (born 1965), architect
• Nicolas Kitsikis (1887-1978), Greek civil engineer, rector of the Athens Polytechnic School, senator and member of the Greek Parliament, doctor honoris causa of the Technical University of Berlin.
• Heinz-Hermann Koelle(*1925) former director of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, member of the launch crew on Explorer I and later directed the NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center's involvement in Project Apollo.
• Abdul Qadeer Khan(*1 April 1936) Pakistani nuclear scientist
• Franz Kruckenberg (1882–1965), designer of the first aerodynamic high-speed train 1931
• Karl Küpfmüller (1897–1977), electrical engineer, essential contributions to system theory
• Wassili Luckhardt (1889–1972), architect
• Georg Hans Madelung (1889–1972), a German academic and aeronautical engineer.
• Herbert Franz Mataré (1912-2011), German physicist and Transistor-pionier
• Alexander Meissner (1883–1958), electrical engineer
• Erwin Wilhelm Müller (1911–1977), physicist (field emission microscope, field ion microscope, atom probe)
• Gustav Niemann (1899 – 1982), mechanical engineer
• Ida Noddack (1896–1978), nominated three times for Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
• Jakob Karol Parnas (1884–1949), biochemist, Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway
• Wolfgang Paul (1913–1993), physicist, Nobel prize winner 1989
• Franz Reuleaux (1829–1905), mechanical engineer, often called the father of kinematics
• Klaus Riedel (1907–1944), German rocket pioneer, worked on the V-2 missile programme at Peenemünde.
• Alois Riedler (1850–1936), inventor of the Leavitt-Riedler Pumping Engine; proponent of practically-oriented engineering education.
• Hermann Rietschel (1847-1914), inventor of modern HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning).
• Arthur Rudolph (1906–1996) worked for the U.S. Army and NASA, developer of Pershing missile and the Saturn V Moon rocket.
• Ernst Ruska (1906–1988), physicist (electron microscope), Nobel prize winner 1986
• Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), architect (at the predecessor Berlin Building Academy)
• Georg Schlesinger (1874–1949)
• Eckehard Schöll (*6.2.1951 in Stuttgart) Physicist and Mathematician
• Adolf Slaby (1849–1913), German wireless pioneer
• Albert Speer (1905–1981), architect, politician, Minister for Armaments during the Third Reich, was sentenced to 20 years prison in the Nuremberg trials
• Ivan Stranski (1897–1979), chemist, considered the father of crystal growth research
• Ernst Stuhlinger (1913–2008), member of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, director of the space science lab at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.
• Kurt Tank (1893–1983), head of design department of Focke-Wulf, designed the FW-190
• Hermann W. Vogel, (1834–1898) photo-chemist
• Wernher von Braun (1912–1977), head of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket program, saved from prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials by Operation Paperclip, first director of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Marshall Space Flight Center, called the father of the U.S. space program.
• Wilhelm Heinrich Westphal (1882–1978), physicist
• Eugene Wigner (1902–1995), physicist, discovered the Wigner-Ville-distribution, Nobel prize winner 1963
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), philosopher
• Elisa Leonida Zamfirescu (1887-1973) chemist, graduated 1912, female engineering pioneer.
• Günter M. Ziegler (*1963), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2001)
• Konrad Zuse (1910–1995), computer pioneer

Rankings

In the British Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2017, the TU Berlin ranks 82nd overall, making it one of the top 100 universities worldwide.

As of 2016, TU Berlin is ranked 164th worldwide and 47th in the world in the field of Engineering & Technology according to the British QS World University Rankings. ^[21] It is one of Germany's highest ranked universities in statistics and operations research and in Mathematics according to QS.

See also

• Universities and research institutions in Berlin
• European Institute of Innovation and Technology
• Berlin School of Economics and Law
• Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin)
• Hertie School of Governance
• Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin)
• Universität der Künste (Berlin University of the Arts)
• Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (HTW Berlin University of Applied Sciences)
• Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin (Beuth University of Applied Sciences)

References

External links

• (German) Official Homepage
• (English) Official Homepage
• (German) Homepage of the Student's Council and Government
• Map of campus

TU9 German Institutes of Technology e.V.
RWTH Aachen TU Berlin TU Braunschweig TU Darmstadt TU Dresden Leibnitz Universität Hannover Karlsruhe Institute of Technology TU München Universität Stuttgart