[1] He was employed as a lecture assistant at the Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry at the Technical University, where he received his doctorate in engineering on 13 July 1929 with a dissertation entitled "The Thermal Decomposition of Nitrogen Oxide" under Max Vollmer.

Initially, Kummerow worked as chief engineer at the Gasglühlicht-Auer-Gesellschaft until 27 October 1932, when he moved position to the development office of the Loewe-Radio-AG company in Berlin.

[2] Although he was not tied to any political party, he joined communist resistance groups after the Nazi siezure of power and organized acts of sabotage against the German armaments industry with Hans Coppi and Erhard Tohmfor.

[3] Kummerow is repeatedly wrongly associated with the Oslo Report, which was written by the physicist Hans Ferdinand Mayer, who was employed at Siemens at the time.

His wife Ingeborg Kummerow, whom he had married on 24 October 1936, was sentenced to death by the Reich Military Court in January 1943 and beheaded in Plötzensee Prison on 5 August 1943.