Michael Roth (cyberneticist)

For many years, Roth was the chair of the Thuringia subdivision of the Verband Hochschule und Wissenschaft (Association for Higher Education and Science, VHW) in the German Civil Service Federation, as well as a member of the federal board of the VHW in Bonn (chair at the time: Reinhard Kuhnert). This professional association of professors, university lecturers and scientific assistants at universities and institutes of higher education had been founded in November 1990 in Thuringia to engage employees and civil servants, where the VHW as part of the German Civil Service Federation also has the right of hearing in legislative procedures and the collective bargaining law.

Furthermore, since his early years, Roth had been interested in a higher-level view of the evolution of science. In 1986, he completed his Habilitation at the TU Dresden in the field of the philosophy of science.

Roth was the founder and editor of the magazine „Mikroprozessortechnik“ at the East German publishing company Verlag Technik Berlin. In an evening talk at a technical committee conference of the Chamber of Technology (KdT) in Angelroda in April 1982, he described the tedious processes for founding this magazine under the conditions in the GDR: For 15 years he made efforts until a small number of copies of „Mikroprozessortechnik“ was allowed to be released. It was forbidden to use the word „Informatik“, as Günter Mittag, member of the Politbüro of the SED considered this a term of West German ideology. The argument of a limited quota of paper available to the publisher had to be overcome as well as the criticism that the publishing company VEB Verlag Technik had not published a new magazine for 28 years.

In 1978, he was appointed Professor for Automation and Technical Cybernetics ("Automatik und Technische Kybernetik") at the TH Ilmenau. This appointment spoke highly of his knowledge and his wealth of experience. His lectures and his textbooks extended the training of engineers with degrees in microprocessor technology – at the time, microprocessor technology was a rare specialization in the German-speaking area.

Roth was appointed associate professor at the TH Ilmenau in 1970, in the department Technical and Biomedical Cybernetics ("Technische und Biomedizinische Kybernetik", TBK, Director: Karl Reinisch). In cooperation with expert committees from the Chamber of Technology ("Kammer der Technik", KdT, the organization of engineers, technicians and researchers of the GDR) and the electronics industry of Thuringia, he developed the new special field of microcomputer technology, which he also introduced as an independent subject, publishing specialized reference books in several editions.

Roth was born in Lomnička, and originally completed his vocational training as a mechanic for agricultural machinery and as a programmer. He started his university studies in 1957 at the then Hochschule fuer Elektrotechnik Ilmenau in electrical engineering, with a specialization in control engineering under Karl Reinisch. He received his academic degree as a Diplom-Ingenieur (Dipl.-Ing.) in 1963. After that, he worked at the institute for computer engineering ("maschinelle Rechentechnik") as a scientific assistant. He successfully completed this work in 1967 earning a Doctorate degree as a Doktoringenieur (Dr.-Ing.). His dissertation was in the domain of computer engineering, focussing on the design of hybrid computers. This constituted an essential foundation for his later research. Subsequently, he finished additional studies at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute in 1967/68.

Michael Roth (18 June 1936 – 23 July 2019) was a German engineer and professor of automation, specializing in microprocessor technology, computer science and sociology as well as philosophy of science. He was one of the pioneers in the area of computer engineering in Germany.