Philipp Kornreich

2025 Sigma Xi Fellow

For his long and innovative career in solid-state and optoelectronic research—from pioneering low-temperature symmetry measurements and inventing novel fiber-optic devices to founding specialized fiber fabrication labs—and for his decades of service in mentoring, teaching, and advancing technology.

Biography

I was born 4 November 1931 in Wien. We are Jewish. In 1937/1938 i started elementary school. My father worked as an Engineer in a factory that made small electric motors. In March 1938 the Germans occupied Austria. After two weeks my parents did not let me leave our apartment. I presume that is when the persecution of Jews started. 

In September 1938 we left Wien without telling anybody. We went first to Berlin for my father to get a German Passport. “Kristallnacht” was in November 1938. We fled to Riga, Latvia. My father had to work illegally as a motor mechanic and  i went to various schools, Latvian, Yiddish, etc. 

In 1940 the Soviets Occupied Latvia. After the Russians arrival, things improved for us, my father could work legally, and I went to a better school. Like all children in the school, i too became a member of the Communist Children’s Organization. 

The Germans attacked the Russians at 06:00 o’clock 21 June 1941. At 20:00 o‘clock  the Soviet NKVD came and interned us. They told my mother to take warm clothing and warm bedding. The NKVD put us overnight in a school gymnasium and the next day the Russians put us in a train of box cars which had boards on each end for sleeping. In the middle was an iron stove, a table and a few chairs. Three weeks later we arrived in an interment camp in Novosibirsk. This saved our lives. We found out 6 years later, when we returned to Wien in 1947, that the Germans occupied Riga two days after we had left. 

There were Jewish-German and Jewish-Austrian scientists with us. I learned a lot from the scientists and my father. 

Since nobody worked in this camp the Russians did not think this was productive, so the next summer the NKVD put us in another train of box cars, and six weeks later we arrived in the city of Karaganda, Kazakhstan. In the evening the Russians put us onto flat bed trucks and we drove through the night, about 100 km south of Karaganda. First, into a European looking small town called Spask. After two weeks the Russians marched us 1 km to an abandoned old Kazakh village called Kok-U-Sek made of mud brick houses, that were half above and half under ground. I went several times back to get our belongings from Spask.  We stayed 4 ½ years in Kok-U-Sek, which was a huge 10 km x 5 km farm. Since the area was a semi desert, it had three large water storage lakes. 

The first year was terrible. When we arrived, we only had rotting vegetables from the last year in a storage cellar to eat for one year. We and the Russians ate the same foods. We had doctors, but no medicines in 1942. My father died that summer from Hunger and Pneumonia. The next fall, when things grew in the fields, there was food to eat. I remember a soviet propaganda celebration in Spask where people left food on the tables they could not finish. We kids went to Russian school and the grownups worked on the farm. I continued learning from the German/Austrian- Jewish scientists and the Soviet “political officer”, who looked after me after i lost my father.  We kids went swimming in the large water storage lakes. Nobody persecuted us, but life was very primitive. Life was hard for the grown ups. We still did not know about the Holocaust. 

There was a large metal trash pile in Spask. I salvaged metal parts to make various things. I made knitting needles, a large wooden “4 engine plane” with a steering wheel that turned the rudder, and by tilting the steering wheel it operated the ailerons. I carved small wooden figures as passengers and the pilot. I made knifes and chisels for doing the wood carvings.                        
In February, 1947 after an 8-week journey in another box car train we arrived back in Wien. We found out that all our relatives and my parents friends were murdered by the Nazis. It was a shock for my mother. The Wien Israelitische Kultusgemeinde, the Jewish Community Organization of Wien found an apartment and helped us. We now live 3 blocks from this apartment.  

I went to a special Gymnasium, high school, for kids whose education was disrupted by the war. I caught up enough to apply to the TGM, an Institute of Technology for studying Electrical Engineering in 1948. I was accepted and started my Electrical Engineering career.

However, my mother was fearful of the Nazis, no family was left, so she did not want to stay in Wien. She decided to go to relatives in the US, her brother was in New York and her sister-in-law in Pittsburgh PA. We left April 1950 for the US. and lived in Pittsburgh, PA where my father’s sister and her husband, an accountant, lived. I did not know a word of English, therefore i studied English until end of summer 1952.

In the fall of 1952 i continued my Electrical Engineering Education at Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University. I received a good recommendation letter from TGM. They gave me credit for the one year at TGM and i started as a sophomore. I finished my course work, except for a freshmen Chemistry i changed to a company working on a new technology “Computers”, Sperry Rand Univac. I started in a Testing Group, then a Circuit Design group, an Advanced Circuit Design group, and finally a Research group. 

There I met J. Presper Eckart one of the inventors of the first computer, the ENIAC, and Professor Herbert Callen of the Physics Department of the University of Pennsylvania. They recommended that i get my Ph D degree paid by Sperry Rand Univac. I finished my freshmen Chemistry course at Rutgers University, received my B. S. Degree from Carnegie Tech and started my graduate study in the Moor School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. I took many of my courses in the Physics Department.

In August 1967 i received my Ph D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania and started my 48 year career as a Professor of Electrical Engineering at Syracuse University. 

Most of the projects i worked on at Syracuse University were my inventions, or my models of Nature. As i learned from Professor Callen i never used “formulas” even once developed by famous scientists. I derived my Models of Nature from basic principles. The devices i worked on were my inventions. This made my papers hard to publish. But it was fun. 

From 1967 to 1984 i worked with a colleague, now Dean Emeritus of the College of Engineering of the University of Cincinnati. He looked after the research funding and i worked two floors below ground in the lab.

I proved that Vanadium films changed conducting stage under pressure at temperatures below 2 degrees K. I invented a camera that used a CdS photoconductor film scanned by two perpendicular Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) to read out the two dimensional Fourier Transform of the light intensity pattern of an image, the “Direct Electronic Fourier Transform (DEFT)” camera. 

I developed a passive radar that used ambient non coherent microwaves. It could detect stealth planes. The radar group at Rome USAF lab was not interested. But two years later we read that the Chinese build a passive radar similar to the one we made. 

I invented an optical fiber with an about 15 nano meter thick semiconductor film between the glass core and glass cladding that amplified light and could be made to lase. Since the semiconductor layer has a large electron density the fiber has a large gain per mm length. Because of the poor glass quality our reproducibility was not always good. 

I think since the rods and cones in our eyes have periodic light detecting light guides made of disks interspersed with fluid layers, we can see in 3-dimensions with each eye. One can make a three-dimensional camera with towers of periodic semiconductor layers at every pixel. Periodic photo - conducting wave guides can do ranging. 

After 48 years as a faculty member at Syracuse University my wife said it is “time”. Thus i retired from Syracuse University in June 2015.

However, i continue writing and publishing scientific papers:

I again switched areas to the Interaction Propagation Delay due to the finite speed of light. Most present explanation either ignore half of the solution or call upon non observable physics models.

  “An extendable Space Time Curvature modede model”, a variation of the series expansion of a Lagrangian of a space time curvature mode model. The General Relativity Theory (GRT) solutions are based on the variation of a geodetic path resulting in parabolic solutions. This limits the solutions to attracting gravitational interactions. The variation of a series expansion can have higher order than parabolic solutions. This allows for solutions that can for a range of space - time have an accelerating expansion, while in another range of space - time have collapsing solutions. This model has the Euler Lagrange Equations as zero order solution, the GRT as second or solution and higher 4th order, 6th order or higher order solutions beyond the GRT.

Quantization of Slightly Curved Space-Time. 

I made a model of Surface Acoustic Waves (SAW) propagating on the inside surface of a tubular fused quartz fiber. To my surprise no such a model has been published to date. Since the SAW are much more sensitive to the effect of gravity, curvature of space – time, one can build a gravity wave detecting interferometers that is much smaller than the km size multi pass light gravity wave detectors. One can build an array of the SAW based gravity wave detectors that would for the first time detect a gravity wave image.