Johann Nikuradse

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Johann Nikuradse (Georgian: ივანე ნიკურაძე, Ivane Nikuradze) (November 20, 1894 – July 18, 1979) was a Georgia-born German engineer and physicist. His brother, Alexander Nikuradse, was also a Germany-based physicist and geopolitician known for his ties with Alfred Rosenberg and for his role in saving many Georgians during World War II.

He was born in Samtredia, Georgia (then part of the Kutais Governorate, Imperial Russia) and studied at Kutaisi. In 1919, through the recommendations of the conspicuous Georgian scholar Petre Melikishvili, he went abroad for further studies. The 1921 Sovietization of Georgia precluded his return to homeland and Nikuradse naturalized as a German citizen.

As PhD student of Ludwig Prandtl in 1920, he later worked as a researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research (now the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization). He succeeded in putting himself in Prandtl’s favour and thus advanced to the position of department head. In spite of his close ties with the Nazi Party, Nikuradse came, in the early 1930s, under fire of the Institute’s National Socialist Factory Cell Organization whose members accused him of spying for the Soviet Union and of stealing books from the institute. Prandtl initially defended Nikuradse, but was eventually forced to dismiss him in 1934.[1] He then served as a professor at the University of Breslau (1934-1945), and an honorary professor at the Aachen Technical University since 1945.

Nikuradse lived mostly in Göttingen and engaged in hydrodynamics. His best known experiment was published in Germany in 1933 [2]. Nikuradse carefully measured the friction a fluid experiences as it is forced through a pipe at varying speeds, where the flow in the pipe is turbulent. He found that the friction decreases as the speed increases, but then the friction increases at high speeds before attaining a constant value.[3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Renneberg, Monika (1994), Science Technology, and National Socialism, p. 79. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521528607
  2. ^ Laws of flow in rough pipes. Translation of Stromungsgesetze in rauhen Rohren, Nikuradse, Forschung auf dem Gebiete des Ingenieurwesens, 1933. NACA Technical Memorandum 1292.
  3. ^ A 73-year-old experiment yields secrets. United Press International. January 31, 2006. Accessed on January 25, 2007.