User:Zoroastrama100/Helmut Schulz

Helmut W. Schulz (born 1912 in Berlin, Germany) is a German chemical engineer and professor of Columbia University who received 64 patents in disparate fields like nuclear physics, rocketry and waste-to-energy processes.

Early Life
Helmut Wilhelm Schulz was born in 1912 in Berlin and moved to New York with his family in 1924. He was valedictorian at Brooklyn Technical High School. Later, he received a Pulitzer scholarship to Columbia and earned a B.S. in 1933 and a M.S. in 1934.

Upon graduation, he went to work for Union Carbide and traveled in 1940 to Niagara Falls to help improve its methanol plant. While experimenting, he used a contaminated bottle of solution which exploded on contact. The caustic splattering blinded him.

Work and Research
When Schulz learned that physicists at Columbia University had achieved fission of a uranium isotope, he worked and succeeded in devising a process for separating uranium isotopes using gas centrifuge, presenting his idea in a paper to university researchers. When the government settled on the gaseous diffusion process to enrich uranium, Dr. Schulz filed for a patent in 1942 and later granted in 1951. Returning to Union Carbide after receiving his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Columbia in 1942, Dr. Schulz wrote two papers on the possibility of using infrared radiation to generate molecular reactions.

In 1948, Schulz approached Charles H. Townes at Columbia University and offered him a Union Carbide fellowship. Impressed by Schulz's inventiveness, Dr. Townes used his fellowship to hire Arthur L. Schawlow. Together, they later invented the laser and its cousin, the maser. Both received the Nobel Prize in Physics.

In the 1960's, Dr. Schulz developed new ways to produce solid rocket fuel and then took a leave from Union Carbide to oversee the United States Department of Defense's rocket-propulsion program. Finally retiring from Union Carbide in 1969 and with a grant from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Schulz returned to Columbia to study ways to convert waste to energy. He developed clean processes to produce electricity using solid waste, sewage sludge and even toxic materials like PCB's and chemical weapons.

In 1977 when the United States planned to build the first gas centrifuge plant, the United States Department of Defense awarded Dr. Schulz $100,000 in royalty for his contribution.

Personal Life
Helmut Schulz's wife is Colette Prieur Schulz; their children are, Raymond, of San Mateo, Ca., Caroline Chechen of Otisville, NY, Roland, of Harrison, Robert, of Stamford, Conn., and Thomas, of Manhattan. The couple also had seven grandchildren.