Heinz Haber (May 15, 1913–February 13, 1990) was a German physicist and science writer who primarily became famous for his TV programs and books about physics and environmental subjects. His lucid style of explaining hard science has frequently been imitated by later popular science presenters in Germany.
After studying physics in Heidelberg and Berlin and obtaining his doctorate, Haber served in World War II for the German Luftwaffe as a reconnaissance aviator until 1942.
He returned to the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Physik and spent much of World War II conducting research on high-speed, high-altitude flight for the Luftwaffe Institute for Aviation Medicine. In order to assess the risks faced by German air force pilots, the institute performed experiments on hundreds of inmates at the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. The inmates who survived these experiments were usually killed and then dissected. Both Haber and Wernher von Braun were involved with Operation Paperclip and intimately a part of the Nuremberg medical tribunal, which saw former Nazis war criminals rescued to the United States, ultimately resulting in a considerable contribution to the development of NASA.
After the war Haber lectured at Heidelberg. In 1946, he emigrated to the United States, as many German scientists did after the war, and joined the USAF School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Air Force Base. Together with fellow German Hubertus Strughold, he and his brother Dr. Fritz Haber (April 3, 1912 - August 21, 1998) made pioneering research into space medicine in the late 1940s. The brothers proposed parabolic flights for simulating weightlessness. In 1952, he became associate physicist at the University of California, Los Angeles. In the 1950s, Haber eventually became the chief scientific consultant to Walt Disney productions. He later co-hosted Disney’s “Man in Space” with von Braun. When the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration asked Walt Disney to produce a show championing the civilian use of nuclear power, Heinz Haber was given the assignment. He hosted the Disney broadcast called “Our Friend the Atom” and wrote a popular children’s book with the same title, both of which explained nuclear fission in simple terms. “Our Friend the Atom” was sponsored by General Dynamics, a manufacturer of nuclear reactors. The company also financed the atomic submarine ride at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he was well known in Germany as a popular science spokesperson and wrote magazine columns and numerous books and presented his own TV programs like Professor Haber experimentiert, Das Mathematische Kabinett, Unser blauer Planet, Stirbt unser blauer Planet?, Professor Haber berichtet, and WAS IST WAS mit Professor Haber. He was founding editor of the German science magazine "bild der wissenschaft" from 1964 to 1990. His memorable experiments included one where the onset of a nuclear chain reaction was simulated with hundreds of mouse traps, each one having been loaded with two ping pong balls.
Heinz Haber had an unparalleled capability for presenting hard scientific facts in a manner and language which was understandable and entertaining for the layman without being sloppy. This won him many accolades, such as the Adolf-Grimme-Preis and the Goldene Kamera.
Heinz Haber has two children, Kai (* 1943) and Cathleen (* 1945), from his first marriage, and a third child, Marc (* 1969), from the second. His first wife Anneliese lives in Tucson, Arizona, his second wife Irmgard in Hamburg, Germany.