Johann Nikuradse

Who was Johann Nikuradse?

Johann Nikuradse was a Georgia-born German engineer and physicist. His brother, Alexander Nikuradse, was also a Germany-based physicist and geopolitician known for his ties with Alfred Rosenberg and for his role in saving many Georgians during World War II.

He was born in Samtredia, Georgia and studied at Kutaisi. In 1919, through the recommendations of the conspicuous Georgian scholar Petre Melikishvili, he went abroad for further studies. The 1921 Sovietization of Georgia precluded his return to homeland and Nikuradse naturalized as a German citizen.

As PhD student of Ludwig Prandtl in 1920, he later worked as a researcher at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Flow Research. He succeeded in putting himself in Prandtl's favour and thus advanced to the position of department head. In spite of his close ties with the Nazi Party, Nikuradse came, in the early 1930s, under fire of the Institute's National Socialist Factory Cell Organization whose members accused him of spying for the Soviet Union and of stealing books from the institute. Prandtl initially defended Nikuradse, but was eventually forced to dismiss him in 1934. He then served as a professor at the University of Breslau, and an honorary professor at the Aachen Technical University since 1945.