Prof. Dr. Heinrich Kreye celebrated his 80th birthday on April 6. Born in Adenstedt, Peine district, he completed his school education with the Abitur at Ratsgymnasium Peine. From 1959 to 1965, he studied physics at the TU Braunschweig and TU Stuttgart and, after conducting research at the Max Planck Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart and the Institute of Metal Physics in Göttingen, obtained his doctorate in 1968 at the TH Stuttgart (Dr. rer. nat.).
After working in the Physical Metallurgy Department of Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ, USA, and as a senior engineer at the Institute for Materials Technology at Ruhr University Bochum, he was appointed to the then newly founded University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg in 1975 (renamed Helmut Schmidt University in December 2003), where he established the Institute for Materials Technology and headed it until his so-called retirement in 2005. During this time, he also spent two research stays as a visiting professor at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Florianopolis, Brazil, and at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH, USA.
In his doctorate, Kreye dealt with fundamental investigations into the thermomechanical treatment of multiphase materials. At Bell Laboratories, he was able to use the findings to optimize the mechanical, electrical and magnetic properties of electronic materials. At Ruhr University, he then began work on ultrasonic welding, friction welding and explosive welding, which he initially continued in Hamburg. His interest then turned to the field of surface technology. From 1981, he and his group concentrated on electrolytic and electroless metal deposition for over 10 years. They presented the results of their work at the annual DGO conferences and in numerous journal articles. He then turned his attention to thermal spraying, in particular the then still relatively new process of high-speed flame spraying. All of his group's work involved fundamental investigations to understand the processes and - building on the knowledge gained in the process - optimization of the processes through to the development of new applications. From 1995, he and his group concentrated entirely on cold gas spraying, a process previously discovered in Russia in which powder particles are accelerated to supersonic speed in a heated gas jet and then form a dense, firmly adhering layer on impact with the substrate without prior melting. The cold gas spray systems, which have been marketed worldwide since 2000 by CGT Cold Gas Technology GmbH and are now sold by Impact Innovations GmbH, were developed as a prototype at the Hamburg Institute. Under Kreye's successor, Professor Thomas Klassen, the Hamburg Institute continues to be regarded as a world leader in this field.
The group's work has resulted in numerous publications, presentations at international specialist conferences and patents. Kreye himself was awarded the Masing Prize by the German Society for Metallurgy in 1974 and the Heinz-Leuze Prize by the German Society for Electroplating in 1987. In 2005, the ASM Thermal Spray Society honored him for his services to high-speed flame spraying and cold gas spraying by inducting him into its Hall of Fame.
He is still in good health and spends much of his free time cycling, hiking and traveling to faraway countries with his wife. He continues to be involved in student exchanges at his university, where he and his successor use their numerous contacts with foreign companies, institutes and universities to arrange an internship abroad for engineering students or a place to study for their Bachelor's or Master's thesis. He is also happy to look after visiting students from abroad, from obtaining a residence permit and advice on study issues to tips on leisure activities
