Karl-Rudolf Koch
Karl -Rudolf Koch ( born July 30, 1935 in Hilchenbach, Siegen ) is a German surveyor and professor at the University of Bonn. Since July 2000 he is professor emeritus; as his successor was appointed by TU Graz Wolf -Dieter shoe.
In professional circles, it is mainly through his scientific contributions to the compensation calculation and Satellite Geodesy known. He's since about 1980 the holder of numerous awards and honorary doctorates of several ( inter alia, Stuttgart 1999).
Biography
Karl -Rudolf Koch studied geodesy at the University of Bonn and then worked as surveyor trainee and Assistant Professor in Bonn. After receiving his doctorate in 1965 and habilitation in 1967, he received a research center in the United States: first at the Ohio State University in Columbus, then at the National Geodetic Survey (NGS ) in Rockville, Maryland. At the NGS where you worked on various satellite techniques, cooking was always active until 1983.
In 1970 he returned back from the USA as associate professor of Physical Geodesy to Bonn and in 1978 became director ( professor ) at the Institute of Theoretical Geodesy as a successor to the Institute 's founder, Helmut Wolf. Among the new agendas cook belonged - in contrast to similar institutions, for example in Austria or southern Germany usual - even teaching duties in the compensation calculation and statistics. This activity should fascinate him for a long time and make the inventor of several innovative methods.
The German Geodetic Commission (DGK ) took him in 1979 as a full member, as did the ESA for the project group radar altimeter, where he worked as a consultant until 1987. During this time he went temporarily as a visiting professor to the Americas and Asia ( Curitiba / Brazil, Calgary, Haifa, and Wuhan). At ESA, he coordinated in 1989-1993, following its participation in the evaluation of the altimetry altimeter data of the geodetic and RS satellites European Remote Sensing Satellite.
A major task was cooking from 1987 to 1997 as director of the German Geodetic Research Institute ( DGFI ) with its two departments in Munich ( DGFI I., from which, inter alia, Christoph Reigber and Harald shoe emerged ), and the former Institute for Applied Geodesy ( IfAG ) in Frankfurt am Main. Especially in satellite geodesy Koch was able to secure his team a top position in the global geodetic research.
In addition to the organizer of the scientist Koch was at the University of Bonn to and after the pioneer in the fields of adjustment and applied statistics: As in 1975 stagnated research on the method of parameter estimation, he could make his work the relation to mathematical statistics. What he contributed to the semantic modeling, see professionals as a "quantum leap" in modern geodesy - and also in Geoinformatics, which gets increasingly have to deal with the problems of data quality.
Main research topics
As a result of Koch's scientific achievements, which he made known through repeated participation in seminars and in international research projects, further guided by him Institute of Theoretical Geodesy to Bonner " pilgrimage " for researchers from across the globe. It ranks among geodesics of the leading German Institutes of Higher Geodesy - in addition to (but working in other fields of Geodesy ) institutes in Hannover and Munich. Also in the field of digital signal processing Koch has done Understanding and written with his longtime collaborator Michael Schmidt the textbook " Deterministic and stochastic signals with applications in digital image processing ."
The most intense edited cook the topic potential theory and Earth's gravity. In 1969 he formulated the geodetic boundary value problem with a known surface of the earth; In 1972, he and AJ Pope were able to prove the existence and uniqueness of the solution. His colleague at the institute Erik Grafarend supplemented this research to the free RWA and the schiefachsig boundary value problem. 1969-1971 chef was inspired by current issues of geometric and dynamic satellite geodesy to potential theoretical approaches that enabled a gravity field determination from measurements of optical satellite cameras and Doppler satellite with additionally introduced gravity anomalies.
In this context probably be most essential contribution to the geoid determination, he in the 1970s under the term potential of a simple layer ( engl.: simple layer potential ) was developed; first publications emerged to 1969-1971 in collaboration with Foster and Morrison with Bertold U. Witte. In this method a thin surface assignments came cooking, as at that time the satellite geodesy began to suffer from the increasing flood of data from measurements of the orbits and the computer so to speak, by not complying. Thus ( " harmonic coefficients ", see also mass functions), the Bonn researchers were able to hitherto predominant methodology of the spherical function developments of the gravity potential by a very effective, robust, although complement to the model boundaries unsteady calculation method.
Said shortly: you need ( s) with chef's method is no longer tedious calculation days to calculate data from 100,000 50,000 mass functions of the globe, but could attach directly to so-called land-uses at the sites of the largest gravity anomalies. This " assignment" of the earth's surface with fictitious thin masses in addition to its computational efficiency related also very flexible because it does not presuppose a geometrically rigid grid in modeling the Earth's gravity field. With the same flexible approaches have been some years later introduced the first accurate measurement data of satellite altimetry in improved earth models.
Not least because of this innovative method of satellite geodesy, the equally the geoid and the difficult celestial mechanics near-Earth space probes " before their time " solvable made , Koch was awarded in 1972 a chair at the geoid research and ( geo) physical geodesy leading TU Vienna. However, the succession of sudden death Viennese professor Karl leather Steger joined Koch after lengthy negotiations not because Bonn him could offer better financial terms.
External links and sources
- Literature by and about Karl- Rudolf Koch in the catalog that German national library
- The Bonn Institute History
- 50 years Institute of Theoretical Geodesy, Univ.Bonn 2005 (PDF file, 1.42 MB)