Background
Zippe was born in Varnsdorf, Austria-Hungary (nowadays Czechoslovakian Republic) in 1917.
Zippe was born in Varnsdorf, Austria-Hungary (nowadays Czechoslovakian Republic) in 1917.
Zippe studied and graduated with Bachelor of Science In 1945, he was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical engineering with emphasizing on thermal column and its applicant physics.
Physics at the University of Vienna in the "1938, and served in the Luftwaffe as a flight instructor and a researcher on radar and airplane propellers. In 1941, Zippe received his Bachelor of Surgery in Mechanical engineering, and Master of Science in 1943 in same respected same discipline. While doing his post doctoral research at the University of Vienna, Zippe participated in Germany"s nuclear weapons project in 1940s.
By the time Zippe fully joined the project as the team leader, communist spies kidnapped him, along with other technically skilled scientists and engineers, and imprisoned him in a special camp where he led a team that worked on centrifuge research for the Soviet Union.
He was allowed to leave in 1956, and returned to Vienna. His notes had been confiscated when he left the Soviet Union, but working from memory, he was able to recreate the centrifuge at the University of Virginia in the United States.
The United States government tried to recruit him for secret nuclear research, going so far as to ask him to change his citizenship, but he refused and returned to Europe. Working in industry in the 1960s, he was able to improve the efficiency of the centrifuge.
He enjoyed flying and flew planes until he was 80 years old.
His invention made it cheaper to build nuclear reactors, and nuclear weapons, which increased the risk of nuclear proliferation. When asked if he has any regrets, he responds, "With a kitchen knife you can peel a potato or kill your neighbor, it"s up to governments to use the centrifuge for the benefit of mankind.".
He was the junior research team member of the isotope separation project led by Klaus Clusius at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.