Robert von Lieben was a notable Austria

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

n physicist

Physicist

A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...

.

Robert von Lieben was born to Leopold von Lieben and Anna von Lieben.

Education

Lieben attempted gymnasium

Gymnasium (school)

A gymnasium is a type of school providing secondary education in some parts of Europe, comparable to English grammar schools or sixth form colleges and U.S. college preparatory high schools. The word γυμνάσιον was used in Ancient Greece, meaning a locality for both physical and intellectual...

 and then enrolled in Realschule

Realschule

The Realschule is a type of secondary school in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. It has also existed in Croatia , Denmark , Sweden , Hungary and in the Russian Empire .-History:The Realschule was an outgrowth of the rationalism and empiricism of the seventeenth and...

. However, he left without taking the final examination, the Abitur

Abitur

Abitur is a designation used in Germany, Finland and Estonia for final exams that pupils take at the end of their secondary education, usually after 12 or 13 years of schooling, see also for Germany Abitur after twelve years.The Zeugnis der Allgemeinen Hochschulreife, often referred to as...

. He showed a knack for the physical science

Physical science

Physical science is an encompassing term for the branches of natural science and science that study non-living systems, in contrast to the life sciences...

s at a young age.

Thanks to his well-off parents (his father, Leopold von Lieben, was president of the Vienna board of trade, and his mother, Anna von Lieben, born of the Viennese Todesco dynasty, owned a mansion at Ringstrasse, across from the opera house), he could independently pursue his scientific propensity. For example, at his father's estate in Mödling he installed electric lighting. After his education he interned at Siemens-Schuckertwerke in Nürnberg.

Military experience

The young Lieben voluntarily enrolled in the military, but only weeks later was discharged after he fell off his horse and was severely injured. From this point on, Lieben's health always troubled him, and an adrenal abscess, which never completely healed, probably contributed to his early death.

Start of an Academic Career

After auditing classes at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

, he studied for one year at the Göttingen Institute for physical chemistry, where he again received no degree. This period of study influenced von Lieben greatly; he and his mentor, Walther Nernst

Walther Nernst

Walther Hermann Nernst FRS was a German physical chemist and physicist who is known for his theories behind the calculation of chemical affinity as embodied in the third law of thermodynamics, for which he won the 1920 Nobel Prize in chemistry...

, would speak for hours over radiological discoveries; Nernst, among other things, received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in recognition of his work in thermochemistry.

Discoveries

Back in Vienna, Lieben started a laboratory. The results of the discovery of an electrochemical phonograph and the polarization of X-rays in 1903, as well as the purchase of a telephone factory in Olomouc

Olomouc

Olomouc is a city in Moravia, in the east of the Czech Republic. The city is located on the Morava river and is the ecclesiastical metropolis and historical capital city of Moravia. Nowadays, it is an administrative centre of the Olomouc Region and sixth largest city in the Czech Republic...

 (Moravia

Moravia

Moravia is a historical region in Central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, and one of the former Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Silesia. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region...

) in 1904, provoked Lieben to develop a telephone amplifier via a cathode beam (electron beam) known as the telephone-relay.

In 1906 von Lieben applied for a patent for his cathode-beam relay: he patented the ability of a magnetic field to deflect an electron ray.

In 1910 he improved the design by adding a control-grid, with which the current density could be varied and consequently amplification attained. Lieben patented this effect. Electrostatic control also underlies the operation of Lee de Forest's Audion (vacuum tube triode), patented in 1907 (U.S. patent 879, 532).

As did de Forest, Lieben encountered a problem with trace amounts of mercury vapor left by his vacuum pump. Mercury ions interfered with proper operation of his cathode-beam relay. This problem was not solved until 1913, through the work of Irving Langmuir in achieving high vacua.

Von Lieben died in 1913, at the age of 34.