The
Technical University of Berlin (
Berlin Institute of Technology,
TUB,
TU Berlin, German:
Technische Universität Berlin) is located in
BerlinBerlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city and the eighth most populous urban area in the European Union...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
.
It was founded in 1879 and, with nearly 30,000 students, is one of the largest technical universities in Germany. It also has the highest proportion of foreign students out of universities in Germany, with 20.9% in the summer semester of 2007, roughly 5,598 students. The university alumni and professor list include eight
Nobel PrizeThe Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize. The award was established by the 1895 will and estate of Swedish chemist and inventor Alfred Nobel. It was first awarded in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace in 1901...
winners.
History
The institution was unified in 1879 under the name
Royal Technical College of Charlottenburg (later Berlin) by merging the
Building Academy (
BauakademieThe Bauakademie in Berlin, Germany, built between 1832 and 1836, is considered one of the forerunners of modern architecture due to its theretofore uncommon use of red brick and the relatively streamlined facade of the building....
), established in 1799, and the
Vocational Academy, established in 1829.
Since 1916 it has been integrated with the former
Mining Academy, which was the oldest institution, founded in 1770.
The college was closed after
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
on April 20, 1945 and the university re-opened on April 9, 1946 under its current name.
Campus
The TU Berlin covers ca. 600,000 m², distributed over various locations in Berlin.
The main campus is located in the borough of
CharlottenburgCharlottenburg is a locality of Berlin within the borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, named after Queen consort Sophia Charlotte...
. The seven schools of the university have some 28,200 students enrolled in more than 50 subjects (January, 2009).
Organization
Since April 4, 2005, the TU Berlin has consisted of the following schools:
- Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines which study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytic, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural and social sciences....
- Mathematics
Mathematics is the science and study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures, and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions....
and Natural SciencesIn Science, the term natural science refers to a naturalistic approach to the study of the universe, which is understood as obeying rules or laws of natural origin...
- Process Sciences and Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art and profession of acquiring and applying technical, scientific and mathematical knowledge to design and implement materials, structures, machines, devices, systems, and processes that safely realize a desired objective or inventions.The American Engineers' Council...
- Electrical Engineering
Electrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
and Computer ScienceComputer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems. It is frequently described as the systematic study of algorithmic processes that create, describe and transform...
- Mechanical Engineering
Mechanical Engineering is an engineering discipline that was developed from the application of principles from physics and materials science. Mechanical engineering involves the analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of various systems...
and Transport Systems
- Planning - Building - Environment (merge of former schools of "Civil Engineering
Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works such as bridges, roads, canals, dams and buildings...
and Applied Geosciences" and "ArchitectureFor a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of architecture. Architecture is the art and science of designing and constructing buildings and other physical structures for human shelter or use....
- EnvironmentThe natural environment, commonly referred to simply as the environment, is a term that encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof....
- SocietySociety or human society is the manner or condition in which the members of a community live together for their mutual benefit. By extension, society denotes the people of a region or country, sometimes even the world, taken as a whole....
")
- Economics
Economics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and ManagementManagement in all business and human organization activity is simply the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading, directing, facilitating and controlling or manipulating an organization or effort for...
Faculty and staff
6,721 people work at the university: 319 professors, 1,832 postgraduate researchers, and 2,089 personnel work in administration, the workshops, and the central facilities. In addition there are 1,803 student assistants and 161 trainees (January 2006).
International student mobility is applicable through
ERASMUS programmeThe ERASMUS programme, or European Region Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students, is a European student exchange programme established in 1987...
or through
Top Industrial Managers for EuropeTop Industrial Managers for Europe is a network of more than fifty engineering schools and faculties and technical universities....
(TIME) network.
Library
The new common main library of the Technical University of Berlin and of the
Berlin University of the ArtsThe Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK is a German university founded in 1975 with the merger of the Berlin State School of Fine Arts and the Berlin State School of Music and the Performing Arts. Its root institutions date back to the founding of the Akademie der Künste in 1696...
was opened in 2004. The library building was sponsored by
VolkswagenThe Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft , also known as Volkswagen Group or as VW, is an automobile manufacturer and mobility organisation based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany and is the pioneer brand within the Volkswagen Group, which contains the car brands Audi AG, Bentley Motors Ltd.,...
and is named Volkswagen Library. All former 17 libraries of the Technical University of 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 (
Wirtschaftswissentschaftliche Dokumentation – WiWiDok).
Notable alumni and professors
(Including those of the Academies mentioned under History)
- August Borsig
Johann Friedrich August Borsig was a German businessman who founded the Borsig-Werke factory.Borsig was the son of cuirassier and carpenter foreman Johann George Borsig...
, businessman
- Carl Bosch
Carl Bosch was a German chemist and engineer and Nobel laureate in chemistry. He was a pioneer in the field of high-pressure industrial chemistry and founder of IG Farben, at one point the world's largest chemical company....
(1874–1940), chemist, Nobel prize winner 1931
- Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun was a German American rocket physicist and astronautics engineer, becoming one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Germany and the United States...
(1912–1976), head of Nazi Germany's V-2 rocket program, saved from prosecution at the Nuremberg TrialsThe Nuremberg trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
by Operation PaperclipOperation Paperclip was the code name for the 1945 Office of Strategic Services, Joint Intelligence Objectives Agencyrecruitment of German scientists from Nazi Germany to the U.S...
, first director of the United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight CenterThe George C. Marshall Space Flight Center , the original home of NASA, is a lead center for propulsion, Space Shuttle propulsion, Space Shuttle external tank, crew training and payloads, International Space Station design and construction, for computers, networks, and information management...
, called the father of the U.S. space program
- Franz Breisig
Franz Breisig was a German mathematician, chiefly known for his work on quadripoles , later to be known as two-port networks.-Publications:*Breisig, Dr F, Theoretische Telegraphie, Braunschweig, F...
(1868–1934), mathematician, inventor of the calibration wire and father of the term quadripole network in electrical engineeringElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
- Wilhelm Cauer
Wilhelm Cauer was a German mathematician and scientist. He is most noted for his work on the analysis and synthesis of electrical filters and his work marked the beginning of the field of network synthesis...
(1900-1945), mathematician, essential contributions to the designFilter design is the process of designing a filter , often a linear shift-invariant filter, which satisfies a set of requirements, some of which are contradictory...
of filterIn signal processing, a filter is a device or process that removes from a signal some unwanted component or feature. Filtering is a class of signal processing, the defining feature of filters being the complete or partial suppression of some aspect of the signal...
s
- Carl Dahlhaus
Carl Dahlhaus , a musicologist from Berlin, has been one of the major contributors to the development of musicology as a scholarly discipline during the post-war era....
(1928-1989), musicologist
- Dennis Gabor
Dennis Gabor CBE, FRS, was a Hungarian electrical engineer and inventor, most notable for inventing holography, for which he later received the Nobel Prize in Physics.-Biography:He was born as Gábor Dénes, in Budapest, Hungary...
(1900–1971), physicist (holographyHolography is a technique that allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and later reconstructed so that it appears as if the object is in the same position relative to the recording medium as it was when recorded...
), Nobel prize winner 1971
- Fritz Haber
Fritz Haber was a German chemist, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1918 for his development for synthesizing ammonia, important for fertilizers and explosives. Haber, along with Max Born, proposed the Born–Haber cycle as a method for evaluating the lattice energy of an ionic solid...
(1868–1934), chemist, Nobel prize winner 1918
- Gustav Ludwig Hertz
Gustav Ludwig Hertz was a German experimental physicist and Nobel Prize winner, and a nephew of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz.-Biography:...
(1887–1975), physicist, Nobel prize winner 1925
- George de Hevesy
George Charles de Hevesy, Georg Karl von Hevesy, was a Hungarian radiochemist and Nobel laureate, recognized in 1943 for his key role in the development of radioactive tracers to study chemical processes such as in the metabolism of animals.- Early years :Hevesy György was born in Budapest,...
(1885–1966), chemist, Nobel prize winner 1943
- Karl Küpfmüller
Karl Küpfmüller was a German electrical engineer, who was prolific in the areas of communications technology, measurement and control engineering, acoustics, communication theory and theoretical electro-technology....
(1897–1977), electrical engineerElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
, essential contributions to system theory
- Wassili Luckhardt
Wassili Luckhardt was a German architect. He studied at the Technical University of Berlin and Dresden. Luckhardt and his brother Hans worked closely together for most of their lives...
(1889–1972), architect
- Alexander Meissner
Alexander Meissner was Austrian engineer and physicist. He was born in Vienna and died in Berlin....
(1883–1958), electrical engineerElectrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after...
- Erwin Wilhelm Müller (1911–1977), physicist (field emission microscope, field ion microscope
Field ion microscopy is an analytical technique used in materials science. The field ion microscope is a type of microscope that can be used to image the arrangement of atoms at the surface of a sharp metal tip....
, atom probeThe atom probe is an atomic-resolution microscope used in materials science that was invented in 1967 by Erwin Wilhelm Müller, J. A. Panitz, and S. Brooks McLane.-Atom-probe field-ion microscopy :...
)
- Jakob Karol Parnas (1884–1949), biochemist, Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas
Glycolysis is the metabolic pathway that converts glucose, C
6H
12O
6, into pyruvate, C
3H
6O
3-...
pathway
- Wolfgang Paul
Wolfgang Paul was a German physicist, who co-developed the ion trap. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1989 for this work....
(1913–1993), physicist, Nobel prize winner 1989
- Ernst Ruska
Ernst August Friedrich Ruska was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in electron optics, including the design of the first electron microscope.Ruska was born in Heidelberg...
(1906–1988), physicist (electron microscopeAn electron microscope is a type of microscope, a scientific instrument which is used to magnify things on a fine scale. That uses a particle beam of electrons to illuminate a specimen and create a highly-magnified image...
), Nobel prize winner 1986
- Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Karl Friedrich Schinkel was a Prussian architect and painter. Schinkel was one of the most prominent German architects and the best example of neoclassicism....
(1781-1841), architect (at the predecessor Berlin Building Academy)
- Georg Schlesinger (1874–1949)
- Albert Speer
Albert Speer was a German architect who was, for part of World War II, Minister of Armaments and War Production for the Third Reich. Speer was Adolf Hitler's chief architect before assuming ministerial office...
(1905–1981), architect, politician, Minister for Armaments during the Third Reich, war criminal
- Kurt Tank
Kurt Waldemar Tank was a resourceful German aeronautical engineer and test pilot, heading the design department at Focke-Wulf from 1931-45. He designed several important aircraft of World War II, including the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter aircraft.-Early life:Tank was born in Bromberg , Province of...
(1893–1983), head of design department of Focke-WulfFocke-Wulf Flugzeugbau AG was a German manufacturer of civil and military aircraft during World War II. Many of the company's successful fighter aircraft designs were slight modifications of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190.-History:...
, designed the FW-190
- Wilhelm Heinrich Westphal (1882–1978), physicist
- Hermann W. Vogel
Hermann Wilhelm Vogel was a German photochemist and photographer who made key contributions to practical color photography...
(1834–1898) photo-chemist
- Eugene Wigner (1902–1995),physicist, discovered the Wigner-Ville-distribution, Nobel prize winner 1963
- Konrad Zuse
Konrad Zuse was a German engineer and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, in 1941...
(1910–1995), computer pioneer
See also
Other Universities of Berlin:
- Berlin School of Economics and Law
- Freie Universität Berlin (Free University of Berlin)
- Hertie School of Governance
The Hertie School of Governance is the leading Public Policy school in Germany, and one of the leading policy institutes in Europe, located in the heart of Berlin, in the historic Quartier 110 in Friedrichstraße...
- Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin)
- Universität der Künste (Berlin University of the Arts)
External links
Official Homepage Official Homepage