Joachim Kuettner

Who was Joachim Kuettner?

Joachim Kuettner, also spelled Küttner, was a German-American atmospheric scientist.

Born and raised in Breslau Germany, Joachim Kuettner put his early interest in the atmosphere aside to complete a doctorate in law and economics at age 21. He worked in small-town courts and gazed at cumulus clouds while on the road. As Germany's legal and political structure deteriorated in the 1930s, Kuettner switched gears to earn a second doctorate, this time in meteorology. For his dissertation, he deployed 25 instrumented gliders to gather data on lee waves, the newly discovered features forming downwind of mountains. He also set a world altitude record for gliders, soaring without oxygen—and with numb feet and blue fingers—to 6,800 meters. Kuettner flight-tested the world's largest airplane, the Gigant, during World War II, narrowly escaping death as the plane broke apart in flight and his parachute opened just 200 meters above ground. After the war, "I wanted to go to a mountaintop and be alone," Kuettner recalled. He spent three years studying many atmospheric phenomena, including thunderstorm electricity, at the observatory atop the Zugspitze, the highest point in Germany.