HU Hauptgebäude mit Helmholtz

HU-Podcast: “Hermann von Helmholtz was a pop star”.

A conversation with Daniel Tyradellis and Felix Sattler about one of the most enigmatic scientists of the 19th century, whose 200th birthday the HU is celebrating this summer as part of the Open Humboldt Festival.

Formulating scientific questions and thoughts so that everyone really understands them is a science in itself – and Hermann von Helmholtz was one of the best in the field. So says Prof. Dr. Daniel Tyradellis, scientist and curator at the Hermann von Helmholtz Zentrum für Kulturtechnik at the Humboldt-Universität.

Teaching as a discipline in its own right is often underestimated today, says Daniel Tyradellis. People went to Helmholtz’s lectures back then like they go to a Star Wars film today, says Tyradellis: “The man was a pop star”.

Helmholtz, whose 200th birthday is being celebrated this summer, was, among other things, a physiologist, doctor and physicist – a polymath who invented and built many devices. We still know and use his ophthalmoscope today. Likewise, the invention of the first synthesiser goes back to Helmholtz. “He not only researched the creation of sound, but also the ear. He was able to explain both precisely,” says curator Felix Sattler from the Tieranatomisches Theater at Humboldt-Universität. Sattler and Tyradellis work in an interdisciplinary way – a way of working that Helmholtz lived to a special degree.

Radio journalist Cora Knoblauch talks to Felix Sattler and Daniel Tyradellis about the need, still important today, to think and work like Helmholtz and about how such thinking leads to knowledge transfer that can, for example, make people cancel a cruise they have already booked through an exhibition.

humboldt-hoeren-podcast-hu-berlin „Humboldt hören“ Podcast Folge 23 „Hermann von Helmholtz war ein Popstar“

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