Irene Reinhild Agnes Elisabeth Sänger-Bredt was born on April 24, 1911, and died on October 20, 1983. She was a German engineer, mathematician, and physicist. She helped design a proposed spacecraft that could travel between continents and carry weapons during and before World War II.

Life and career

Irene Bredt earned her PhD in natural science in 1936. Her research paper was titled X-rays from Rare Earths. Her first job was offered by a research center in Trauen, Germany, which studied aviation. At that time, the center had little public information. Bredt worked as an assistant to Eugen Sänger at this rocket research center. Her work focused on problems related to how heat and gases behave in liquid-propelled rockets. In 1941, she became head of the Physics Department at the center. The next year, she became a First Assistant at the German Research Institute for Gliding Flight in Ainring. Her job there involved testing and analyzing ramjet engines.

In 1945, Bredt moved to Paris and worked as a researcher on similar projects for the Arsenal de l'Aéronautique, later known as SNECMA. At the same time, she worked as a consultant for MATRA in Paris Billancourt and the Institute of Technology in Madras, South India. In 1954, after marrying Eugen Sänger and having a son, Bredt returned to Germany. She became deputy scientific director of the Research Institute for the Physics of Jet Propulsion, which Eugen Sänger had founded in Stuttgart.

In 1960, Bredt became one of the founding members of the International Academy of Astronautics. She was the only woman among the founders. From 1963, she worked as a consultant engineer for space-related projects at Junkers and Bölkow (later Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm GmbH). Irene Sänger-Bredt died in 1983 in Stuttgart, Germany. By that time, she had written 88 research papers on topics in natural science and the science of culture.

Honors

In 1970, Bredt was awarded the Hermann Oberth Gold Medal by the German Rocket Society for her important scientific achievements.