Early Life and Education
Merbold was born in Greiz, Thuringia — just 40 kilometers from where Sigmund Jähn, the first German in space, was born. Both happened to grow up in the socialist German Democratic Republic, also known as East Germany. After he finished school in 1960, Merbold, as thousands others before the Berlin wall was built, defected to the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). He studied physics at the University of Stuttgart, earning a diploma in 1968 and a doctorate in 1976. He then joined the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart, where he worked on solid state physics and low temperature physics.
Read more about this topic: Ulf Merbold
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or education:
“Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and however early a man’s training begins, its probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.”
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“The facts of a person’s life will, like murder, come out.”
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