Carl Hellmuth Hertz

Carl Helmut Hertz ( also often found in the literature under Carl Hellmuth Hertz, * October 15, 1920 in Berlin, † April 29, 1990 in Lund ) was the son of Gustav Hertz and pioneer in the field of sonography.

Life

During the Second World War he served as a soldier in the Wehrmacht. He got into American captivity and was brought to the United States. A friend of his father, who received the Nobel Prize, arranged the release of Hertz and gave him a job at the University of Lund in Sweden. So he was allowed to leave the U.S., but not to return to Germany.

At the University of Lund Hertz was a doctoral student in the department of nuclear physics. Out of interest, he undertook non-destructive testing of materials using ultrasound, in which one can recognize concealed material changes ( voids, cracks, etc. ) in metallic bodies. At lunch he talked to Inge Edler, the head of cardiology at the University Hospital of Lund. With a Siemens ultrasound machine the company Tekniska Rontgencentralen at the shipyard in Malmö, which served as a control of the welds, he made the first attempts at own heart. Soon after, she received in 1953 a separate device from Siemens in Erlangen, thanks to the contacts of his father, Gustav Hertz, who led the Siemens research laboratories prior to the Second World War. Together with Noble he developed sonography (simultaneously there were developments in this area in other medical disciplines ) and was the first professor working in this field at the University of Lund. He founded the Department of Electrical Measuring method at the University of Lund.

To print the results of the ultrasound he developed in the 1960s, an early form of the inkjet printer. In 1963 he was awarded the prize for his work on Westrupska biophysiology of plants.

In 1977 he received the Albert Lasker Award for Clinical Medical Research.