Manfred von Ardenne

Manfred Baron von Ardenne (1907 to 1997) was a German researcher, autodidact in applied physics and inventor who took out about 600 patents in fields including electron microscopy, medical technology, nuclear technology, plasma physics and radio and television technology. Born in Hamburg into an aristocratic family, he received his first patent at fifteen, left university without a degree and from 1928 to 1945 directed his own self-funded laboratory in Berlin-Lichterfelde. At the Berlin Radio Show of August 1931 he gave the world's first public demonstration of a television system using a cathode-ray tube for both transmission and reception, and in 1937 he developed the scanning transmission electron microscope. After the Second World War he was held in Soviet custody and worked in the Soviet nuclear weapons programme, and he later founded a private research institute in East Germany.