Abraham Esau

Abraham Esau (1884 to 1955) was a German physicist who made his name at Telefunken, where he pioneered the very high frequency waves used in radar, radio and television, and who later became a central figure of the German nuclear energy project. From 1937 he headed the physics section of the newly created Reich Research Council, and in early 1939 he initiated the first meeting of the Uranium Club, the precursor of the Army Ordnance Office nuclear energy project that began that September. When control of the project passed to the Research Council in 1942 he became plenipotentiary of nuclear physics, in control of the project, and he stayed influential as president of the Reich Physical and Technical Institute. He held a chair at Jena, where he was also rector, and a professorship at Berlin. After the war the Americans turned him over to the Dutch, who acquitted him and expelled him in 1948; he then taught short-wave technology at Aachen, and in 1954 he received an honorary doctorate from Freiburg for his work on diathermy.