Gabriel Kron
Encyclopedia
Gabriel Kron was considered an unconventional and somewhat controversial engineer who worked for General Electric
in the US from 1934 until 1966. He was responsible for the first load flow (electricity) distribution system in New York. Kron is famous for his Method of Tearing or Diakoptics
.
Instead of taking a conventional postgraduate degree, Kron went on a two year walking tour around the world.
. He received citizenship papers in 1926. Then he went on a two-year trip on foot around the world. He published several books and more than fifty papers. He won the Montefiore Prize of the University of Liège, Belgium, for his paper entitled "Non-Riemanriian Dynamics of Rotating Electrical Machinery". He worked for General Electric
until 1966.
, the Science of Parts and Wholes.
The Tensor Club of Great Britain (TCGB) and the Research Association of Applied Geometry of Tokyo (RAAG) were formed to study Kron's and similar work. Diakoptics has also found use in many other branches of engineering, including structures, aerodynamics, control systems, and nuclear reactors.
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
in the US from 1934 until 1966. He was responsible for the first load flow (electricity) distribution system in New York. Kron is famous for his Method of Tearing or Diakoptics
Diakoptics
Gabriel Kron's Diakoptics or Method of Tearing involves breaking a problem down into subproblems which can be solved independently before being joined back together to obtain a solution to the whole problem.Gabriel Kron was an unconventional Engineer who worked for GE in the US until his death in...
.
Instead of taking a conventional postgraduate degree, Kron went on a two year walking tour around the world.
Biography
Kron came to the USA in 1921. He studied for a degree in electrical engineering at the University of MichiganUniversity of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
. He received citizenship papers in 1926. Then he went on a two-year trip on foot around the world. He published several books and more than fifty papers. He won the Montefiore Prize of the University of Liège, Belgium, for his paper entitled "Non-Riemanriian Dynamics of Rotating Electrical Machinery". He worked for General Electric
General Electric
General Electric Company , or GE, is an American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in Schenectady, New York and headquartered in Fairfield, Connecticut, United States...
until 1966.
Contributions
Kron has made contributions to the following fields:- Non-Euclidian geometry
- Tensor analysis
- Electrical engineering
- Computational circuit analysis
- Forecasting and optimizing
- Network topologyTopologyTopology is a major area of mathematics concerned with properties that are preserved under continuous deformations of objects, such as deformations that involve stretching, but no tearing or gluing...
- Energy conversion
- System engineering
Method of Tearing
The "Method of Tearing" is a technique for splitting up physical problems into sub-problems, solving each individual sub-problem, and then recombining them to give an exact overall solution. The technique is efficient on sequential computers, but is particularly so on parallel architectures. Its relevance to quantum parallelism is not yet understood. It is peculiar as a decomposition method, in that it involves taking values on the "intersection layer" (the boundary between subsystems) into account. The method has been rediscovered by the parallel processing community recently under the name "Domain Decomposition". It is also related to MereologyMereology
In philosophy and mathematical logic, mereology treats parts and the wholes they form...
, the Science of Parts and Wholes.
The Tensor Club of Great Britain (TCGB) and the Research Association of Applied Geometry of Tokyo (RAAG) were formed to study Kron's and similar work. Diakoptics has also found use in many other branches of engineering, including structures, aerodynamics, control systems, and nuclear reactors.
Awards and honors
Kron has received the following awards and honors:- Doctor of Science honoris causa, University of Nottingham, 1961
- Montefiore Prize, University of the Liège, Belgium, 1935
- Coffin Award, General Electric Company, 1942
- Master of Science in Electrical Engineering, Honorary, University of Michigan, 1936
- Patron and Honorary Member of the Tensor Club of Great Britain
- Honorary Member, Research Association of Applied Geometry, Tokyo
Further reading
- Alger, P., (ed), 1969, The Life and Times of Gabriel Kron. Mohawk Development Publ., Schenectady, NY. LCCN 70-99590.
- Bowden, K., 1998, Huygens Principle, Physics and Computers. Int. J. General Systems, Vol 27(1-3), pp 9–32.
- Kron, G., 1963, Diakoptics: The Piecewise Solution of Large Scale Systems, MacDonald.
- Kron, G., 1959, Tensors for Circuits. Dover Publ., New York.
- Hoffmann, B., 1949, "Kron's Non-Riemannian Electrodynamics". Reviews of Modern Physics; Vol. 21, Numb. 3.