Konrad Beyerle
Konrad Beyerle (1900 in Freiburg im Breisgau - 1979) was a German engineer. During World War II, he was in charge of centrifuge research and development at "Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H." He participated in the development of ultracentrifuges for the enrichment of uranium done under the auspices of the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club. After the war, he was head of the Institute for Instrumentation of the Max Planck Society. Education. Beyerle had a doctorate. Career. As late as 1935, Beyerle was employed at the "Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft" (AEG, General Electric Company). No  later than 1938, he was employed at the "Anschütz & Co. G.m.b.H." Shortly after the discovery of nuclear fission in December 1938/January 1939, the "Uranverein", i.e., the German nuclear energy project, had an initial start in April before being formed a second time under the "Heereswaffenamt" (HWA, Army Ordnance Office) in September 1939. Beyerle soon brought his industrial expertise to the project for the development of an ultracentrifuge for the enrichment of uranium-235, in collaboration with Paul Harteck, director of the Physical Chemistry Department at the University of Hamburg, and his colleague Wilhelm Groth. Construction began in the autumn  of 1941, and it was done under the auspices of an "Heereswaffenamt" contract let by Kurt Diebner, director of the "Kernforschungsrat" (Nuclear Research Council), under General Carl Heinrich Becker of the HWA. Konrad Beyerle was in charge of centrifuge development at "Anschütz" in Kiel. In 1943, enrichment to 5% was achieved, however, technical difficulties and the war hindered large-scale production. In July 1944, the "Anschütz" company was struck during an Allied air raid, and the exact part of the plant that was working on centrifuges was destroyed. Beyerle moved his effort south and merged with Hartick’s group in  Freiburg and Kandern, the locations to which the Institute of Physical Chemistry had moved in hopes of avoiding Allied air raids. Avoiding the air raids only lasted until September 1944. After World War II, Beyerle was head of the "Institut für Instrumentenkunde" (Institute for Instrumentation) of the "Max-Planck-Gesellschaft" (MPG, Max Planck Society, successor organization to the "Kaiser-Wilhelm Gesellschaft"), in Göttingen, where he continued research and development of centrifuges. Two of his colleagues at the institute were H. Freise and H. Billing. Internal Reports. The following report was published in "Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte" ("Research Reports in Nuclear Physics"), an  internal publication of the German "Uranverein". The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied Operation Alsos and sent to the United States Atomic Energy Commission for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the American Institute of Physics.