Hellmuth Hertz was born on 15 October 1920 in
Berlin, Germany. His father was
Gustav Hertz who, along with
James Franck, was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics 1925 for their experiments on inelastic electron collisions in gases. Gustav Hertz's uncle was in turn
Heinrich Hertz, who first conclusively proved the existence of the
electromagnetic waves. Hellmuth graduated from the elite
Schule Schloss Salem boarding school in 1939 at the age of 19 years with the highest grade in mathematics and physics. The same year, he was conscripted into the
German Army (Wehrmacht) and served as a soldier for
Nazi Germany in
World War II. In 1943 he was captured in the
North African theatre by US troops and brought to America, where he was placed in a
prisoner-of-war camp until 1946. Because his father did some research in the
Soviet Union at that time, he could not get a job in the US. Instead, he got a job at the
Department of Physics in
Lund University in Sweden with the assistance of James Franck and the
Nobel laureate Niels Bohr, who were both friends of Gustav Hertz. From 1961 he was a teacher at Lund University, and from 1963 he was Professor of Electrical Measurement Technology in Lund. He was involved in the development of both the inkjet and the ultrasound technology. He produced the first
echocardiographs together with the Swedish physician
Inge Edler. He was married to
Birgit Nordbring and was the father of Thomas and
Hans Hertz, and he died on 29 April 1990. ==References==