Max Robitzsch was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 meteorological

Meteorology

Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...

 scientist

Scientist

A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

 and university professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

. He invented the 'Robitzsch Actinograph', a type of pyranometer

Pyranometer

A pyranometer is a type of actinometer used to measure broadband solar irradiance on a planar surface and is a sensor that is designed to measure the solar radiation flux density from a field of view of 180 degrees...

 and wrote numerous scientific books and articles. He also undertook an expedition into the Scandinavian arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 to research atmospheric phenomena, spending the 1912/1913 winter in Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

, Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. His mission, together with Kurt Wegener, brother of Alfred Wegener

Alfred Wegener

Alfred Lothar Wegener was a German scientist, geophysicist, and meteorologist.He is most notable for his theory of continental drift , proposed in 1912, which hypothesized that the continents were slowly drifting around the Earth...

, was to set up a meteorological observatory for the German Geophysical Observatory, which they did at the Crossbai, Ebeltofthafen (Ebeltofthamna in Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

). During the long winter stay, they and two helpers performed 275 pilot balloon soundings, 98 tethered balloon soundings and 19 probe launches with the help of a hang glider.

Much of his life (since at least 1917), he worked as a professor at the Meteorological Observatory Lindenberg (German Wikipedia) in Lindenberg, Brandenburg

Brandenburg

Brandenburg is one of the sixteen federal-states of Germany. It lies in the east of the country and is one of the new federal states that were re-created in 1990 upon the reunification of the former West Germany and East Germany. The capital is Potsdam...

. During
the Cold War, he there undertook numerous extensive radio sounding studies of the atmosphere with weather balloon

Weather balloon

A weather or sounding balloon is a balloon which carries instruments aloft to send back information on atmospheric pressure, temperature, humidity and wind speed by means of a small, expendable measuring device called a radiosonde...

s, reputedly at the behalf of the Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 occupation forces in East Germany.

During January to May 1950, he was director of the Meteorologisches Observatorium Lindenberg, before later on becoming professor at (and possibly the director of) the Geophysical Institute of Leipzig, later subsumed in the University of Leipzig

University of Leipzig

The University of Leipzig , located in Leipzig in the Free State of Saxony, Germany, is one of the oldest universities in the world and the second-oldest university in Germany...

.