Hermann Maurer
Hermann A. Maurer ( born April 26, 1941 in Vienna) is a professor of computer science at the Technical University of Graz. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of St. Petersburg, Calgary and Karlsruhe and first since 2001 awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art Class and the Great Golden Medal of Honour of the Province of Styria. Maurer also holds numerous other domestic and foreign awards and is one of the most internationally renowned scientists in Austria. He has 250 theses, supervised more than 40 doctoral dissertations and numerous Habilitation and is the author of about 20 books and over 600 professional articles. In addition, he also writes science fiction literature.
Technical and economic contributions
Hermann Maurer received his doctorate in 1965 with Edmund Hlawka about Rational approximations Irrational numbers. After five years as a professor in Calgary and six years in Karlsruhe (1971-1977), he is since 1978 full professor at the Technical University of Graz, where he was founding dean of the faculty of computer science.
Maurer has made significant contributions to the development of the screen text after eleven years of theoretical work in computer science and is widely known to the public as a ( co-) inventor of the Austrian videotex terminals MUPID. Developed in the 1980s in Styria device is considered pioneering precursor for European Internet technology. Many of Mason's former students and supporters in the Austrian videotex movement took in later decades prominent positions in the Austrian computer science and telecommunications sector and in the public administration.
Maurer is a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, an external member of the advisory board of the University of Kuching in Malaysia, Visiting Professor at the Danube University Krems and was appointed in April 2009 as chairman of the computer science section of the Academia Europaea ( The Academy of Europe), for the he has since built an information system. ( www.ae -info.org ).
Maurer's research in the field of knowledge management have led, among other things, establishing the company Hyperwave with which he introduced the first web-based information system of the second generation. There he was, until bankruptcy in 2005 Chairman of the Supervisory Board. From 2006 to 2009 he was Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of NewHyperG AG. Similarly, he developed the eLearning Suite, a modern, web-based teaching platform.
A total of 30 companies and organizations with his involvement been established, such as the Austria - Forum, a research project based on the Encyclopedia of Austria AEIOU and University Professor Maurer as lead editor, together with the co-editors Trautl Brandstaller, Helga Maria Wolf and Peter Diem is managed. It also qualified users are invited to provide contributions available and to become members of the comprehensive already over sixty people " Editorial Board ". After a year of construction work of this project offers more than 150,000 documents and a considerable number of interactive e-books. The contributions are written primarily by a six-member editorial team and the publishers, or based on existing archives and books, is being tried to always specify the sources (authors, book, archive). This makes them as print publications exactly quotable.
Hermann Maurer in 1999 founded the Competence Centre for Knowledge Management in Graz. Together with the then head of Klaus ordered Tochtermann he initiated in 2001 and the series of conferences I-KNOW.
Statements about the future
In his later publications he has been, among other things with the future of the computer and explained that future computer applications with current understanding, can be adequately described hardly. Therefore, to explain future applications he uses reinterpreted technical terms such as telepathy or teleportation.
In his lectures, he also points to the risks of information technology, for example, to the vulnerability of data networks for terrorist attacks. And the connection of power supply systems and computer networks referred to in this context as it is very problematic. As a solution, he sees the departure from the von Neumann principle of equal treatment between programs and data, and the relocation of the operating system to the hardware - for example, to read-only memory chip - to protect them against attack by viruses.
Maurer also sees the social risks of globalization on the labor market, agriculture and terrorism, which he sees essentially fed by social inequality. He suggests moderate taxes to protect the regional farms and advocates strongly advocated, to do more for the social and environmental catching up of less developed countries.