Max Knoll

Max Knoll ( born July 17, 1897 in Schlangenbad, † November 6, 1969 in Munich) was a German electrical engineer. He developed with Ernst Ruska, the first electron microscope in the world.

Knoll received his doctorate after studying in Munich at the Technical University Berlin Institute for High Voltage Technology. In 1927 he took up the working group for electrons research, with Ernst Ruska was one of his employees. With him he developed from the research on cathode ray oscillograph 1931, the first electron microscope.

From April 1932 until the war's end he led at Telefunken in Berlin the development of the television tube, at the same time he was a lecturer at the TH. From 1948 to 1956 he was professor of electrical and electron optics at Princeton University in the United States. Then he took over the leadership of the newly founded Institute for Electronics at the Technical University of Munich.

For his developments in the field of electron microscopy him numerous honors were bestowed, including the Silver Leibniz Medal of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1941, an honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen in 1965 and an honorary member of the German Society for Electron Microscopy 1967. He died in 1969 in Munich.

Swell

• Lin Qing: the early history of the electron microscope. Publisher for the History of Natural Sciences. and Technology, Stuttgart 1995, ISBN 3-928186-02-7.