Heidelberg University
Germany has long been considered a world leader in science and technology. One of the oldest universities in the world, the University of Heidelberg, was founded in 1386. Karl von Drais, a graduate of Heidelberg University, is credited with inventing the bicycle in 1817.
German Inventors
One of the first German inventions that had a profound impact on the world was the movable type printing press, introduced by Johannes Gutenberg around 1439. The names of numerous German scientists are forever linked to their inventions: Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, Hans Geiger, Ferdinand von Zeppelin, Gottlieb Daimler, Rudolf Diesel and Karl Benz, just to name a few. The world's first programmable, fully automatic computer was built by German Konrad Zuse in 1941. Patents on Zuse's inventions were acquired by IBM in 1946.
Albert Einstein
The quintessential genius, famous for discovering the theory of relativity, was born in Ulm in southern Germany in 1879. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 not for the theory of relativity but for his contributions to the law of photoelectric effect. In a BBC poll taken in 1999, Einstein was named the greatest physicist of all time.
Siegmund Freud
The so-called "Father of Psychoanalysis" was an Austrian citizen born in 1856 in what is today a part of the Czech Republic. His most productive years as a scientist, from about 1900 to 1930, were spent in Vienna. Of Freud's many contributions to phychology, the most lasting include his interpretation of dreams, the "Freudian slip", his controversial theories of sexuality, and the "talking cure" method of psychoanalysis, in which patients relate their problems while lying on the famous couch.
Nobel Prizes in 2007
Germany remains a world leader in science and technology: the Nobel prizes for both physics and chemistry went to German researchers in 2007 (the physics prize was shared with a French scientist). |
|
 |
 |
| Karl von Drais with his invention |
 |
|
| The computer: A German invention? |
 |
|
| Albert Einstein |
 |
|
| Siegmund Freud |
|
