Gernot Zippe

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Gernot Zippe was an engineer responsible for leading the team which developed the Zippe-type centrifuge, a machine for the collection of Uranium-235.

He was born in the late 1910s in Austria, and studied physics at the University of Vienna in the 1930s. During World War II he served in the Luftwaffe. In 1945, at the end of the war, he was captured by the Russians. He was taken, with other technically skilled prisoners, to a special camp, where he led a team that worked on centrifuge research for the Soviet Union. He was allowed to leave in 1956, and returned to Vienna.

When he visited a 1957 conference on centrifuge research in Amsterdam, he realised the rest of the world was far behind what his team had been able to achieve. After release from the Soviet Union, his notes were confiscated; nevertheless, he was able to recreate the centrifuge at the University of Virginia in the United States. The government tried to recruit him for secret nuclear research, going so far as to ask him to change his citizenship, but he refused and returned to Europe.

Working in industry in the 1960s, he was able to improve the efficiency of the centrifuge. He enjoyed flying and flew planes until he was 80 years old.

His invention made it cheaper to build nuclear reactors, and nuclear weapons, which increased the risk of nuclear proliferation. When asked if he has any regrets, he responds, "With a kitchen knife you can peel a potato or kill your neighbour, it's up to governments to use the centrifuge for the benefit of mankind."

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