Die Entwicklung von Elektronen-Kreisbeschleunigern bei Siemens in Berlin und Erlangen

Starting from the fundaments set by Rolf Wideroe and Max Steenbeck, the first medical betatron was developed by Konrad Gund at the Siemens centre in Erlangen. This was the first highly sophisticated, large-scale technical device in medicine. Over a period of 30 years Siemens has manufactured a total of 137 betatrons with different maximum energies and sold them worldwide to scientific institutes and radiotherapy departments, among them the most prestigious therapy centres in Germany and Europe. Methodological investigations on high energy electrons und ultrahard X-rays have paved the way for the establishment of the modern high-energy radiation therapy. The interdisciplinary and increasingly more biophysics-oriented research on and with betatrons has had a decisive influence on the establishment of the profession of the medical physicist.