Hermann Kemper

Hermann Kemper was a German engineer and a pioneer of magnetic levitation, sometimes called the father of maglev. He was born in Nortrup in 1892 and began his research on magnetic levitation in 1922. In 1933 he built a working circuit for hovering based on electromagnetic attraction, and he was awarded Reichs Patent number 643316 for a hovertrack with wheelless vehicles that hover along iron rails by means of magnetic fields. That invention eventually led to the development of the Transrapid system. In 1972 he received the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his research achievements, and he died in 1977. The English Wikipedia article is short, so this entry records only what it states and leaves further biography to later sources.