ABSTRACT
Heinz Schmidtke was born in 1925 in Goslar, Germany. He started his academic training in 1945 at the Technical University of Brunswick in the fields of physics and psychology. In 1949 he received the degree of a doctor of natural sciences. From 1949 to 1955 he worked as an industrial physicist in a German chemical company. During this time he published several research papers. From 1955 to 1956 he was a visiting professor at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. In 1956 he became a head of the Ergonomics Department in the Max Planck Institute of Industrial Physiology in Dortmund, Germany, the institute of the largest German society for basic research. The main focus of his work during this time was directed towards
problems of fatigue, vision, work simplification, and motor coordination. In 1962 he became a full professor and assumed the post of director of the Institute of Ergonomics at the Technical University of Munich. He had served as president (1970-1972) and vice president (1973-1975) of this university. Several times he has been elected president of the German Ergonomics Society, and he worked as vice president of the German Society of Aero-Space Medicine. He was also a member of the Human Factors Panel of the NATO-Science Organization, the Commission of Nuclear Safety of the German Government, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Defence Ministry.
