Vilém Klíma (10 April 1906 – 6 October 1985), originally Wilhelm Kauders, was a Czech electrical engineer and Holocaust survivor who developed a closed-form expression for the distribution factor of a symmetrical three-phase stator winding.
Vilém Klíma (Wilhelm Kauders) died on 6 October 1985 and in an obituary by Frohne[1] it is mentioned that Klíma's equation for the distribution factor[nb 1] of fractional slot windings is not found in textbooks.
An obituary in German was written by Frohne[1] and one in Czech by Čeřovský.
[2] He was the father of Czech novelist and playwright Ivan Klíma.
Vilém Klíma was born on 10 April 1906 as Wilhelm Kauders.
The reason why Klíma changed his name is related to tragic events that occurred during the Second World War.
To supply a name between brackets is not typical, and the only paper with this title was written by Wilhelm Kauders.
This work aimed to determine the parameters that characterise the air gap of the winding.
Also in this paper the induced voltage in the coil sides is already mentioned and represented as a vector.
The resultant vector diagram was called the star of coil groups (German: Spulengruppenstern).
The latter could be referred to as a linear representation of what became known as the star of slots (German: Nutenstern).
Computer technology as we know it today was not available at the time and the use of graph paper certainly was common.
Furthermore, such graphical methods definitely contributed to the subject of stator windings.
However, his name appears in a list of lecturers[wl 1] in the ghetto of Terezín.
[nb 2] The entry details for Kauders record the following: Klíma is also mentioned in the book[wl 2] University Over The Abyss: The story behind 520 lecturers and 2,430 lectures in KZ Theresienstadt 1942–1944 by Elena Makarova.
[6] A very interesting detail from the book relates how Dr. Goldschmied and Dr. Kauders were secretly taken to Germany to improve the performance of German radar.
[nb 4] A witness, Gerda Haas,[wl 3] remembered the following: One day, the two were ordered to prepare themselves to leave Terezin.
Their suitcases must have been cleaned of any signs and numbers, yellow stars were torn off.
Soon, Kauders sent a postcard saying that he was in the [concentration camp] Rosenberg (or -burg), where he was freezing terribly and where he worked on his books all day.
The first book by Klíma entitled Trojfázové komutátorové derivační motory : jejich teorie a praxe[wl 4] was published in 1962.
Kovács, Vilém Klíma published a book on induction machines entitled Asynchronmaschinen.
[7] Vilém Klíma finished his studies with distinction in 1928 at the German Technical University in Prague (today named "České vysoké učení technické v Praze" or Czech Technical University in Prague).
He then started to work for the company ČKD (Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk) in Prague.
After the Munich Agreement in September 1938, Germany annexed the Czech boundary territory, and later (in March 1939) occupied the whole of Bohemia.
During April 1945 Vilém Klíma survived the so-called death march (a miracle at that time).
In 1958 Klíma was awarded the title of Dr.Scientium technicarum for his thesis entitled Theorie der Selbstserregung von Drehstromnebenschluß-kommutatormotoren mit Kondensatoren im Läuferkreis und ihre Verhütung.
Until now, the literature that refers to Klíma's closed expression is very limited.
Authors that refer to the closed expression are Kremser[8] Brune[9] and Germishuizen.
[10] Additionally, Kremser and Brune are all related to the university of Hanover where Vilém Klíma regularly held lectures since 1964 as reported by Frohne.
The distribution factor, as summarised by Brune, for all types of m-phase symmetrical fractional slot windings is given as