With immense sadness, we have to inform about the passing away of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h.c. Dierk F. Schroeder, who was a Professor of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives (later: Mechatronics) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) from 1983 until 2008.
Dr. Schroeder did his Dr.-Ing. (PhD) degree at the Technical University of Darmstadt in the field of Power Electronics in 1969 under the supervision of famous Prof. R. Joetten. His main subject has been line-commutated converters.
After several years in industry (BBC/ABB Company at Mannheim-Kaefertal) he was appointed Professor for Electronics and Power Electronics at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern in 1979. In 1983 he changed to the TUM, where he performed his research for several years. Here he introduced the field of Power Electronics in teaching and research. Together with his team of assistants and PhD candidates, he obtained a very high level of international reputation. In 1993 he received an honorary PhD degree from Moscow Power Engineering Institute.
Dr. Schroeder was successful in initializing a very important priority program at DFG (German Research Federation) during the 1990s, where many well-known researchers joined. His activities in Predictive Control and the Application of so-called Artificial Intelligence in Power Electronics gained worldwide recognition. Dr. Schroeder was an active ambassador of TUM at international conferences – especially in the United States as well as in the Far East.
Dr. Schroeder was active in international federations like IEEE, where he was chair of the joint IAS/PELS/IES Germany Chapter for several years.
Dr. Schröder published a remarkable textbook series on Electrical Drives and Power Electronics (published by Springer), which is highly appreciated and still in use at German language Universities.
In 2010 Dr. Schroeder published (with Springer as well) a book on “Intelligent Identification and Control for Nonlinear Systems” together with Prof. Christoph Hackl, who is a professor at the University of Applied Sciences at Munich today.
Together with Riduttori Bonfiglioli, D. W. Dudley, J. Sprengers, and Hajime Yamashina Dr. Schroeder published a “Gear Handbook” (Handbuch der Getriebemotoren) – this was published in 1997 with Springer. Meanwhile, the book was translated into English, Italian, and French.
With Dr. Schroeder, we lose an important promoter of one of the most important technical fields in electrical engineering. We wish his wife and his children a lot of strength during the time of mourning.