Heinrich Georg Barkhausen (2.12.1881-20.02.1956) was a German physicist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (1949). He was born in Bremen. He studied at the universities of Munich, Berlin and Göttingen. In 1907 he received the degree of doctor at Göttingen. In 1907—11 he worked at the Siemens and Halske laboratories in Berlin, and from 1911 he was professor at the Dresden Polytechnic.
His research was in the field of magnetism, radio engineering and electron physics. In 1919 he discovered the phenomenon of the stepwise change of the magnetisation of ferromagnets under a continuous change of the external conditions, for example of the magnetic field (the Barkhausen effect), and obtained the first proof of the existence of ferromagnetic domains. He invented (1920) an electron tube for generating high-frequency oscillations.