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 Intitut 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.
Read more about this topic: Konrad Beyerle
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