Prof. em. Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Weule — Co-Founder of the Hector Fellow Academy

With deep sorrow, we bid farewell to Prof. em. Dr.-Ing. Hartmut Weule, co-founder of the Hector Fellow Academy and one of the most distin­guished engineer­ing scien­tists of his gener­a­tion, who, like few others, embod­ied and uniquely united the close collab­o­ra­tion between acade­mia and industry.

Together with Dr. h.c. Hans-Werner Hector and his wife Josephine Hector, Hartmut Weule initi­ated the Hector Science Award in 2008 and subse­quently, in 2013, the Hector Fellow Academy. The Academy was estab­lished with the aim of facil­i­tat­ing cutting-edge inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research among researchers in the natural sciences, engineer­ing, medicine, and psychology.

In 2000, he also founded the Hector Seminar together with Dr. Hans-Werner Hector and Prof. Dr. Friedrich Hirsch to support highly talented school students.

Hartmut Weule was born on October 1, 1940. After study­ing mechan­i­cal engineer­ing at the Techni­cal Univer­sity of Braun­schweig, he was awarded his doctor­ate (Dr.-Ing.) with distinc­tion in 1972. In 1973, he joined Daimler-Benz AG in Sindelfin­gen, where he devel­oped electronic axle measure­ment systems and automated fasten­ing technolo­gies, and system­at­i­cally explored the use of robot­ics in the automo­tive indus­try. In 1982, he accepted a profes­sor­ship for Machine Tools and Produc­tion Engineer­ing at the Univer­sity of Karlsruhe. In 1990, he returned to the Daimler-Benz Group as Member of the Board of Manage­ment for Research and Technol­ogy. After return­ing to the Univer­sity of Karlsruhe, he devoted himself with great dedica­tion to the inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the univer­sity. He founded the Inter­na­tional Depart­ment to educate outstand­ing inter­na­tional students in the globally recog­nized field of “German Engineer­ing” and to prepare German students for the inter­na­tional job market.

Hartmut Weule’s extra­or­di­nary achieve­ments have been recog­nized on numer­ous occasions: in 2005, he received the Cross of Merit, First Class, of the Order of Merit of the Federal Repub­lic of Germany; in 2006, he was named an Honorary Acade­mic Citizen; and in 2016, KIT conferred upon him the title of Honorary Senator for his contri­bu­tions to the estab­lish­ment of the Inter­na­tional Department.

We will honor his memory.