Viktor Kaplan
Viktor Kaplan (November 27 1876 in Mürzzuschlag, Austria - August 23 1934 in Unterach am Attersee, Austria) was an Austrian engineer and the inventor of the Kaplan turbine.
Life
Although Kaplan was born into a worker's family (Kaplan's father worked at the railroad), he attended the Technical University of Vienna after he graduated from high school in Vienna in 1895. He studied civil engineering and specialised in diesel motors and from 1900 to 1901 he was drafted into military service in Pula.
After working in Vienna with specialisation on motors, he moved to the Brno University of Technology to do research at the institute of civil engineering. In Brno he spend the next three decades of his life and nearly all his inventions and research are connected with his professorship there (he became a full professor in 1909.
In 1912 he published his most notable work: the Kaplan turbine, a revolutionary water turbine that was especially fitted to produce electricity out of large streams with only moderate incline. In 1912 to 1913 he got four patents on these kind of turbines.
In 1913 he was appointed head of the institute for water turbine. In 1918 the Kaplan turbines were first built by the Storek construction company for a textile manufacturer in Lower Austria. After the success of the first Kaplan turbines, they became used world-wide and are still today one of the widely used kind of water turbines.
In 1926 and 1934 Kaplan received honorary doctorates. He died in 1934 of an apoplexy.