Felix Wankel (1902-1988)
Category: Higher element pairs; Famous Engineers/h2>
Item Number: B02
Description: Wankel used Reuleaux triangle in his combustion engine
Image source
Biographical Information:
Felix Wankel was born August 13, 1902 in Lahr, Germany (Otto, Daimler, and Benz also came from Swabia). He was the only child of Rudolf Wankel (1867-1914), a senior forestry official, and Martha Gertrud (Gerty) Heidlauff (1879-?). His father was killed in August 1914 by schrapnel in World War I.
Wankel went to Unterprima High School, but he graduated from high school at the age of 19. Although the poverty of his family (widowed mother in postwar Germany) meant he had to go to work and could not apprentice or follow further full-time studies, he gained academic recognition within his own time. His first job was in 1921, printing, stocking, and apprenticing in sales for a scientific book publisher in Heidelberg, but Wankel devoted his energy to tinkering, especially after losing the sales job in 1924 in the German Depression. He opened his own workshop that year in Heidelberg.
Felix Wankel conceived the idea of a rotary engine in 1924. He received his first patent in 1929 (DRP 507 584). He would continue to be issued patents for six decades. In 1933 he applied for a patent for a DKM engine, which he received in 1936.
Like many middle class Germans of his time, ruined by the runaway inflation of the 1920's, Wankel had been attracted by the political and economic philosophies of national socialism. As a young man he was a member of the Hitler Youth (where he met his wife, Emmy Kirn) and then a member of the NSDAP party. He resigned from it in 1932 which was the right idea, but there was no best time to do so, because in 1933 the Nazis came into power. This lead to conflict because Wankel had exposed some corruption by the provincial chief (Gauleiter) Wagner. He was arrested and held in prison by the Nazis for some months in Lahr until an industrialist and an engineer intervened on his behalf.
By 1936 he had resettled in the Lindau Bodensee area. In the following years, Wankel mostly made his way by ingenious work on rotary valves and sealing technology for Lilienthal, BMW, DVL, Junker, and Daimler-Benz. During this time he developed various DKM prototypes and also rotary pumps and compressors. When the French army invaded in 1945, the French destroyed his workshops and research and he was imprisoned until 1946.
During the Allied occupation, Felix Wankel began secretly writing his book on the organization of rotary piston engines. He was able to rebuild a research operation by 1951 when he interested NSU in development. This lead to collaboration with Walter Froede , head of the motorcycle racing program, who would ultimately make the decision to adopt the KKM type.
The first truly functional Wankel rotary engine was a DKM type that ran in February 1957. By May a prototype was able to run for two hours. The first KKM engine ran on July 7, 1958. Over the years a number of motor companies have produced cars with this engine, including NSU in Germany and Toyo Kogyu in Japan.
Felix Wankel was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from Technische Universität München on December 5, 1969. He received the Federation of German Engineers Gold Medal in 1969, Germany's highest civilian honor the Grand Federal Service Cross in 1970, the Franklin Medal in Philadelphia in 1971, the Bavarian Service Medal in 1973, the "Honor Citizen" of Lahr in 1981, and the title of Professor in 1987.
He declined honorary citizenship of Lindau when the city rejected his application to build a boathouse with museum there. He set it up on the Swiss side of the Bodensee, partly as a satellite research institute (place to think), partly as a way to obtain Swiss citizenship, partly for taxes, and partly for neutrality in case of war.
Wankel never possessed a driver's license in his life.
Dr. Wankel had a strong impulse towards animal welfare. Since 1972 there is the Felix Wankel Prize for Protection of Animals in Research, maximum DM 50,000 for outstanding research to limit, replace, or as much as possible discontinue experiments with live animals. It may also be awarded for research that promotes the concept of animal protection.
In 1986 he sold his Institute for 100 million DM to Daimler Benz. He was very active late in life, filing a patent in 1987 that was granted in Jan. 1989. After a long illness, Dr. Wankel passed away on October 9, 1988, in Lindau, Germany, where he did much of his research (though some place his death in Heidelberg).
Sources for Further Information on Wankel:
1. Roy Porter and Marilyn Ogilvie (eds.). The Biographical Dictionary of Scientists. V. 2 (Lebedev to Zworykin). New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
2. http://www.monito.com/wankel/dr-wankel.html
