First German Computer Science Diploma

The certificate displayed here, dated January 20, 1971, represents Germany’s first Diplom-Informatiker degree earned in computer science. It marks the inception of a highly sought-after course of study that continues to shape KIT’s profile to this day. This start was not the “big bang” of the discipline, though. As in Karlsruhe, other universities had already offered ways to specialize in the field in the 1950s, following courses of study in mathematics and electrical engineering. The true novelty about the academic degree awarded in 1971 was its name. The term “informatics,” chosen in 1968 by the Federal Ministry of Science and the German Research Association, was virtually the cornerstone of the new discipline of Informatics established in the 1960s. The Institute of Applied Mathematics at Karlsruhe Polytechnic began training students in data processing in 1958. Before its own computers were acquired, programming lessons were conducted using a Zuse Z 22 at the Nuclear Research Center. Almost at the same time, a data technology course was offered in electrical engineering at the then-named Institute of Communications Engineering and Communications Transmission, now known as the Institute of Information Processing Technology (ITIV). The computer science pioneer Karl Steinbuch (1917–2005) had been appointed in 1958 as its director. While Steinbuch’s teaching was clearly focused on hardware, the Institute of Applied Mathematics concentrated primarily on programming. In early 1969, Karl Nickel (1924–2009) founded the Institute of Informatics and launched the computer science Diplom degree program, paving the way for software-oriented computer science education at Karlsruhe University. kn