Wilhelm Nusselt

Ernst Kraft Wilhelm Nusselt ( born November 25, 1882 in Nuremberg, † September 1, 1957 in Munich) was a German physicist.

He studied at the technical universities of Berlin -Charlottenburg and Munich Machine Design and graduated in 1904 as a graduate engineer. He became assistant to Oskar Garlic at the Laboratory for Technical Physics in Munich, where for studies in mathematics and physics through. In 1907 he received his doctorate with his thesis about the " thermal conductivity of insulation ." From 1907 to 1909 he worked as an assistant to Richard Mollier in Dresden and was habilitated with his work on " Heat and momentum transport in pipes ."

With its 1915 published and become famous work " The Basic Law of heat transfer ," in which he fundamentally re represented the heat transfer problems, he founded the similarity theory of heat transfer.

Wilhelm Nusselt was from 1920 to 1925 professor at the Technical University of Karlsruhe.

Wilhelm Nusselt received in 1925 from the Technical University of Munich appointment as full professor to the "Institute for Theoretical Machine Research" and the appointment as director of the "Laboratory for Heat Engines " (together with A. Loschge ). From 1925 until his retirement in 1951 conducted research and taught there as a professor of thermodynamics. During this period, substantial publications emerged in the field of heat transfer ( Nußeltsche water skin theory, Nusselt ball, Nusselt number ).

Wilhelm Nusselt was awarded the Carl -Friedrich- Gauss Medal and the Franz Grashof Commemorative Medal and appointed in 1953 an honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Dresden. In 1953 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.