HOECK

SWITZERLAND (see also List of Individuals)

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15.7.1904 Burgistein/CH - 27.7.1951 Chur/CH

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Erwin Hoeck graduated as a civil engineer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in 1929 in Zurich. He moved then as an assistant to its Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau, today's VAW, and was particularly engaged with the contribution to the Swiss Federal Exhibition in 1939, where he designed a large public model on hydropower. In parallel he was engaged with observations to the Swiss Rhine reach between the Ill River and Lake of Constance, and thus indirectly to the first sediment transport formula of Meyer-Peter, Favre and Müller. In 1943 he submitted his PhD thesis on the head losses in prototype pipelines as applied in hydropower stations.

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Hoeck was appointed in 1941 head of the newly founded VAW hydrology group. There he investigated particularly two questions: (1) Estimation of the Swiss evaporation from a computational model in water resources, and (2) Prediction of river discharges in the early summer. Hoeck used as a model catchment the Baye de Montreux site in Western Switzerland, where he demonstrated that strongly sloping catchments subjected with a usually strong wind need a special treatment for the definition of rainfall intensities. The second question needed an estimation of snow melt in high altitudes, such that Hoeck initiated experimental snow radiation techniques. The results were prepared for his Habilitation thesis, yet his premature death put an end to these works. Hoeck also was the Secretary of the Swiss Hydrologic Commission from 1947, and he lectured from 1949 in hydrometry and hydrography at the Winterthur Technical College. Hoeck passed away following a serious illness.

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_{Hoeck, E. (1943). Druckverluste in Druckleitungen grosser Wasserkraftwerke. Leemann: Zürich.}

_{Hoeck, E. (1947). Pertes de charge dans les conduites forcées des grandes centrales hydro- électriques. Revue Générale de l'Hydraulique 13(39): 134-142; 13(40): 171-190; 13(41): 246-256; 13(42): 301-316.}

_{Hoeck, E. (1952). Der Einfluss der Strahlung und der Temperatur auf den Schmelzprozess der Schneedecke. Kümmerly & Frey: Bern.}

_{Meyer-Peter, E. (1951). Erwin Hoeck. Verhandlungen Schweizerische Naturforschende Gesellschaft 131: 360-362. P}

_{Poggendorff, J.C. (1953). Hoeck, Erwin. Biographisch-Literarisches Handwörterbuch 7a: 506.}

_{Akademie-Verlag: Berlin, with bibliography.}