HERZ

AUSTRIA (see also List of Individuals)

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17.2.1889 Linz/A - 14.11.1980 Caracas/VE

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Oskar Josef Herz graduated as a civil engineer from Vienna Technical University in 1912. He had to join the Austrian Army during World War I and then went in the 1920s to Bandoeng in Java, then a Dutch Colony and today's Indonesia, as a Member of Dienst voor Waterkracht en Electriciteit. He submitted in 1936 a PhD thesis in Vienna and emigrated two years later to Venezuela, once the Germans had annexed Austria. There he continued as an engineer and was in 1963 and 1964 president of Asociacion Cultural Humboldt. He is known for a book with poems, of which seven are set to music.

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The significant contribution of Herz to hydraulics refers to the computation of sideweirs as presented in his 1925 paper. This essential hydraulic structure had been investigated from 1900, with notable contributions by Johann Hermanek (1865-1905), Hubert Engels (1854-1945), and Friedrich Schaffernak (1881-1951). Today, these works are forgotten and sideweirs are designed based on Henry Favre (1901-1966) and Giulio De Marchi (1890-1972), although Herz started with the same equations. He even presented the De Marchi solution and investigated complex, spatially varied open channel flows. The sideweir analysis for steady flow involves the momentum equation and the lateral outflow law. The previous contributions all related to the first equation, whereas the lateral outflow needs special treatment including the effects of lateral approach velocity and lateral outflow angle. These were only systematically investigated from the 1970s.

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_{Blumesberger, S., Doppelhofer, M., Mauthe, G., eds. (2002). Herz. Handbuch österreichischer Autorinnen und Autoren jüdischer Herkunft 18.-20. Jahrhundert 1: 539. Saur: München.}

_{Herz, O.J. (1925). Beitrag zur Abfuhrberechnung von Streichwehren. Wasserkraft 20(3): 41-43; 20(4): 59-62; 20(6): 99-100.}

_{Herz, O.J. (1931). Die Energiewirtschaft auf Java. Wasserwirtschaft 24(23): 388-392; 25(14):}

_{205-209; 25(15): 216-219; 25(16/17): 237-240.}

_{Herz, O.J. (1933). Die Regulierung und Nutzbarmachung des Neusiedlersees. Wasserwirtschaft}

_{26(23): 309-320; 26(28/29): 395; 26(31): 434-435.}

_{Herz, O.J. (1936). Die Wasserbewegung im offenen Gerinne bei veränderlicher Wasserführung. Dissertation. TU: Wien.}

_{Herz, O.J. (1936). Abschluss und teilweise Trockenlegung der Zuidersee in Holland. Wasserwirtschaft und Technik 3(10/11): 104-107; 3(12): 117-120; 3(26/27): 260-265; 3(31/32): 352-357.}

_{Herz, S. (2006). Oskar Josef Herz. Personal communication. P}