Hermann Theodor Simon

Hermann Theodor Simon (1 January 1870, in Kirn – 22 December 1918, in Göttingen) was a German physicist.

[1] He studied physics at the Universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1894 under August Kundt with a thesis on the dispersion of ultraviolet radiation.

Two years later, he became an assistant to Eduard Riecke at the University of Göttingen, then relocated to Frankfurt am Main as director of the physics laboratory.

In 1901 he returned to Göttingen as an associate professor and director of the department of applied electricity.

His research led to a light telephone, with searchlight modulated by a microphone as the transmitter, and a photosensitive selenium cell as the receiver.