41119_Niro jubilaeumsbog_blok_uk - GEA Niro

Johan Ernst Nyrop: the man behind the success
By Christian Schwartzbach
It wasn’t written in the stars November 10, 1933 that the
company A/S Niro Atomizer, established at a meeting in a
lawyer’s office in Copenhagen, would be a prolonged success.
Around the globe, depression and unemployment prevailed
after World War I and the Great Stock Market Crash.
Denmark’s southern neighbor, Germany, was going through
political upheaval that would have catastrophic consequences
for the entire world. Yet there must have been a sense of
optimism and courage among the assembly of enterprising
men at their meeting in attorney Kaj Seth Oppenhejm’s office.
The key person was engineer Johan Ernst Nyrop. His technical
and scientific knowledge had resulted in a number of inventions
and patents, the business potential of which must
have given rise to optimism. A third important participant
was banker Erik Birger Christensen, who had both capital
available and faith in Nyrop.
Johan Ernst Nyrop was born in 1892 and earned his M.Sc.
in engineering in 1917. He was inventive, enterprising and
innovative. As a young man he and his friend Einar Dessau
experimented with broadcasting, among other things, and
he took out his first patent for the telephone telegraph in 1911.
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A tough beginning
Nyrop participated in the establishment of the Danish
Medicinal and Chemical Company A/S in 1919. In the 1920s
he became interested in the spray drying of liquids, and in
1924 he established both a Danish company, A/S Niro, and
an English company, Nyrop Dehydrator, to make use of his
new knowledge. That same year, he got a patent for a rotating
atomizer.
The times were hardly favorable, and since finances were
not Nyrop’s strong suit, his efforts ended a few years later in
bankruptcy and great personal loss. During that same time,
Johan Ernst Nyrop cultivated his academic interests and
wrote articles and books about the catalytic effect of metallic
surfaces. In the early 1930s, he submitted a doctoral thesis
on this topic. The fact that this thesis was rejected, together
with the aforementioned bankruptcy, contributed to Nyrop
seeking new challenges.