Background
Linde was born on June 11, 1842, in Berndorf, Germany, the third of nine children of Friedrich Linde and his wife Franziska Linde, the daughter of a businessman from Neuwied.
1868
Carl von Linde in 1868
Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
From 1861 to 1864 Linde attended the famous Eidgenössische Polytechnikum in Zürich, where he studied science and engineering with Clausius, Zeuner, and F. Reuleaux, as well as aesthetics with F. T. Vischer and art history with W. Lübke.
1922
Wilhelm Exner Medal
1925
Carl von Linde in 1925
Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland
From 1861 to 1864 Linde attended the famous Eidgenössische Polytechnikum in Zürich, where he studied science and engineering with Clausius, Zeuner, and F. Reuleaux, as well as aesthetics with F. T. Vischer and art history with W. Lübke.
Businessman engineer scientist
Linde was born on June 11, 1842, in Berndorf, Germany, the third of nine children of Friedrich Linde and his wife Franziska Linde, the daughter of a businessman from Neuwied.
In Kempten, where his father, a minister, had been transferred, the young Linde pursued classical studies at the Gymnasium, To his literary and cultural interests he soon added a great enthusiasm for technical matters which led him to study machine construction. Thus from 1861 to 1864, he attended the famous Eidgenössische Polytechnikum in Zürich, where he studied science and engineering with Clausius, Zeuner, and F. Reuleaux, as well as aesthetics with F. T. Vischer and art history with W. Lübke.
From 1864 to 1866 Linde received practical training in the workshop and drafting studios of, among others, the locomotive and machine factory of A. Borsig in Tegel, near Berlin. In 1866 he became the head of the technical department of the newly founded Krauss and Company, locomotive manufacturers in Munich. There he was able to implement a series of his own ideas, including those on braking arrangements.
On the founding of the Munich Polytechnische Schule (later the Technische Hochschule) in 1868, Linde became an extraordinary professor, and in 1872, a full professor of theoretical engineering. Here, in 1875, he established an engineering laboratory, the first of its kind in Germany. He lectured on a number of subjects - motors in general; the theory of steam engines, crank motion, and water wheels; turbines; hot-air engines; locomotives; and steamships - and carried out practical laboratory projects. Among his colleagues at the Polytechnische Schule, he was especially close to Felix Klein, who taught mathematics there from 1875 to 1880.
In 1870 Linde started to investigate refrigeration. His research on heat theory led, from 1873 to 1877, to the development of the first successful compressed-ammonia refrigerator. Refrigerators existed before Linde’s, but his was especially reliable, economical, efficient. He stressed that refrigerators should be useful not only for the making of ice, but also for the direct cooling of liquids. For these reasons, breweries were particularly interested in his device.
Linde left his teaching position in 1879 and founded the Gesellschaft für Linde’s Eismaschinen in Wiesbaden to develop his process industrially. Because of the many applications of artificial cooling, the undertaking was an international success. In order to explore the subject of low temperatures at a research station (founded in 1888) and to teach again on a reduced schedule, Linde retired from the management of the business in 1891; at that time twelve hundred refrigerators of his construction were already in operation.
In 1895 Linde succeeded in liquefying air with the help of the Joule-Thomson effect and by the application of the counterflow principle, and the foundations were thereby laid for the maintenance of low temperatures. In London Hampson arrived at a similar process shortly after Linde (1896). Linde also successfully developed devices for obtaining pure oxygen by means of rectification (1902), for the production of pure nitrogen through the use of the nitrogen cycle process (1903), and for producing hydrogen from water gas by means of partial condensation of carbon monoxide (1909). The production of pure oxygen was of great importance for oxyacetylene torches used in metal-working, as was that of pure nitrogen for the large-scale production of calcium nitrate, ammonia, and saltpeter. Linde founded a group of enterprises in Europe and overseas to utilize his processes.
In the second phase of his teaching, beginning In Munich in 1891, Linde dealt primarily with the theory of refrigeration machines. It was at his instigation that the first laboratory for applied physics in Germany was founded at the Munich Technische Hochschule in 1902. Linde was also active on numerous scientific and technical committees. He was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Vienna Academy. In addition, he belonged to the board of trustees of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt and to hoards of directors of the Verein Deutsche Ingenieure and of the Deutsches Museum.
He was knighted in 1897 as Ritter von Linde.
Linde possessed the exceedingly fortunate combination of scientific, technical, and entrepreneurial abilities which met and were developed in this simple man of strong moral character and an uncommon capacity for work.
In 1866 Linde married Helene Grimm; they had six children.
