Engelbert Broda

Engelbert Broda ( born August 29, 1910 in Vienna, † October 26, 1983 in Hainburg an der Donau) was an Austrian physicist and chemist.

Life

Engelbert Broda was born in 1910 as the first son of Viola and Ernst Broda, a Viennese lawyer. He grew up with his brother Christian, later Minister of Justice of Austria, in a social democratic and liberal environment.

Formative influence on him had his uncle Georg Wilhelm Pabst, later a noted film director, and Egon Schönhof, who had returned from the Soviet prisoner of war as a staunch communist. During his student days, he joined the resistance against the Nazis to the Communists. There followed a series of detentions because of his political activity.

Broda emigrated in 1938 to the United Kingdom.

Scientific career

Engelbert Broda received his doctorate in 1934 at the University of Vienna Dr. phil. (Dissertation: . About the X-ray decay of Ammonpersulfatlösungen 2 studies for viscometric and osmotic behavior of high polymers in solution) From 1940 he worked at the Medical Research Council at University College London with the conversion of light into chemical energy. From 1941 he worked at the Cavendish Laboratory on radioactivity and nuclear fission. During this time he began to intensively deal with the work of Ludwig Boltzmann.

In 1947 he returned to the University of Vienna. He was from 1955 to 1980 Professor of Physical Chemistry. In 1975 he published his main scientific work on the "evolution of bioenergetic processes."

Awards

Policy initiatives

Broda joined the Pugwash movement in which scientists use for arms control and disarmament. Research into the uses of solar energy has been touted by him again and again. Another concern of his was the nature conservation. So he sat initiatives to prevent the construction of the power plant Dürnstein in the Wachau. For this he received in 1979 the Austrian Nature Protection Award.

He is buried in a grave of honor in Vienna's Central Cemetery (Group 33 G, number 70).

Espionage accusation

In 2009, a book called " Spies, the Rise and Fall of the KGB in America" ​​was released, the accused Engelbert Broda espionage against the United States and Great Britain and the USSR. The author is the former journalist Alexander Vassiliev, who at that time was commissioned to write a history of the KGB. He got on access to hitherto unpublished documents.

According to KGB documents that were written in August 1943, was Engelbert Broda ( code name " Eric" ), the main source of information about the Soviet Union, American and British atomic bomb research.

A report by the British intelligence service MI5 suspicion was expressed that Engelbert Broda was a spy, but that the MI5 at the time had no evidence against Broda.

Publications

  • Ludwig Boltzmann. Man, physicist, philosopher, 1955
  • Nuclear Power - Hope and Fear, 1956
  • The Evolution of the Bioenergetic Processes, 1975
  • Science, Responsibility, Peace, 1985
Christian Broda Fritz Pregl Prize Integrated Authority File
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