Gernot Zippe Gernot Zippe PhD ( November 1917 – 7 May 2008 ) was an Austrian - German mechanical engineer who is widely credited with leading the team which developed the Zippe - type centrifuge , a centrifuge machine for the collection of Uranium - 235 . Early Life and World War II . Zippe was born in Varnsdorf , Austria - Hungary ( nowadays Czech Republic ) in 1917 . Zippe studied and graduated with B . Sc . 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 B . S . in Mechanical engineering , and Master 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 . He was the junior research team member of the Isotope separation project led by Klaus Clusius at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich . In 1945 , he was awarded a PhD in Mechanical engineering with emphasizing on thermal column and its applicant physics . By the time , Zippe fully joined the project as the team leader , the 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 . In the Soviet Union Zippe worked at the Physics Institute of Sukhumi on a centrifuge project , led by German director Manfred von Ardenne , and directed by another German scientist Max Steenbeck , whose theoretical achievements Zippe used . He was allowed to leave in 1956 , and returned to Vienna . When Zippe visited a 1957 conference on centrifuge research in Amsterdam , he realized the rest of the world was far behind what his team had been able to achieve . 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 . United States offer . 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 . Personal interests . 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 . The Legacy . His invention made it cheaper to build nuclear reactors , and nuclear weapon s , 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 . " It was an American Engineer , John P Feltman , whose research in composite materials led to his invention of a composite high speed centrifuge rotor ( 1966 ) , http : / / www . freepatentsonline . com / 3248046 . pdf , Feltman ' s theories were those upon which the Zippe rotor was developed . Feltman sold this patent to Vernitron Corp . in 1971 to help his friend William Piemonte , who financed Feltman ' s patent application . Feltman ' s patent was predicated on the concept that it was Strength / weight ratios that would make it possible to produce composite material rotors that would allow centrifuge rotors to be rotated at much higher RPM .