Background
Reinhold Rudenberg was born on February 4, 1883, in Hannover, Germany, the son of a manufacturer.
1946
Rüdenberg received the Stevens Institute Honor Award and Medal "For notable achievement in the Field of Electron Optics as the inventor of the electron microscope."
1957
Rudenberg was awarded the Grand Cross of Meritorious Service of the Federal German Republic, Germany’s GVK medal "Pour le Merite."
1961
Portrait of Reinhold Rudenberg, 1961 Elliott Cresson Medalist winner of the Franklin Institute.
1961
Rudenberg was a recipient of the Elliott Cresson Medal issued by the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.
Technische Hochschule, Hannover, Germany
Rudenberg studied electrical and mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Hannover. Then he passed his final degree examination (1906) and his doctoral examination with distinction.
engineer inventor physicist scientist
Reinhold Rudenberg was born on February 4, 1883, in Hannover, Germany, the son of a manufacturer.
Riudenberg studied electrical and mechanical engineering at the Technische Hochschule in Hannover. Then he passed his final degree examination (1906) and his doctoral examination with distinction.
In 1908 Rudenberg entered the Siemens-Schuckertworks in Berlin as a testing engineer for electrical machines. Later he was placed in charge of the development division of the Berlin plant and served as the firm’s chief electrician. In 1916 he created the world’s first 60-MVA turbine generator for the Goldenberg power station in the Rhineland.
In 1913 Rudenberg became Privatdozent at the Berlin Technische Hochschule. His first lectures dealt with three-phase commutator motors. He was granted the title “professor” in 1919 and named an honorary professor in 1927.
In over 100 publications, including several books, Rudenberg treated heavy-current engineering and, occasionally, light-current engineering as well. His textbook on electrical switching processes was a great success; the first edition appeared in 1923 and the fourth, in English, in 1950. His more than 300 patents record the many contributions he made to all areas of electrical engineering.
In 1936 Rudenberg decided to leave Germany; he went to England, where he worked until 1938 as a consulting engineer for the General Electric Company, Ltd., in London. In 1939 he accepted the Gordon McKay professorship at Harvard. There he lectured on electric machines, on energy transfer, and on switching and compensation processes. In 1952, following his retirement, he was a visiting lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles, in Rio de Janeiro, and at Montevideo.
In 1954 Rudenberg became an Eminent Member of the Eta Kappa Nu (ΗΚΝ) or IEEE-HKN, which is the international honor Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Rudenberg had a keen and agile mind, which facilitated him to become a prolific inventor.
In 1919 Rudenberg married Lily Minkowski, daughter of the Göttingen mathematician Hermann Minkowski and Auguste née Adler. The physicist H. Gunther Rudenberg (1920–2009) was the son of Reinhold and Lily Rudenberg.