LIEBEN, ROBERT VON

LIEBEN, ROBERT VON (1878–1913), scientist and inventor. He was born in Vienna, where his father, vice governor of the Austro-Hungarian state bank, was ennobled. Lieben went to work at the Institute for Physical Chemistry in Goettingen, Germany, where he studied under Walter Nernst, a founder of modern physical chemistry. Later he worked in his own laboratory, where he built a private telephone system. In 1906 he invented the amplifying valve and in 1910 the grid tube (with Eugen Resz and Siegmund Strauss as co-inventors). This led directly to modern radio and later developments in electronics such as sound tracks for films and television. In 1936 the Austrian Government issued a stamp commemorating his contribution to research in the field of sound. Lieben had little contact with the Jewish community and referred to himself as an atheist. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: H. von Hoffmannsthal, Die prosaischen Schriften gesammelt, 3 (1917), 48–53; W. Nerst, in: Telefunken Zeitung,   6 (1923); S. Kaznelson, Juden im Deutschen Kulturbereich (1959), 412–31.