Robert Rompe (born 10.09.1905) is a German physicist and a member of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (1953). He was born in St Petersburg. He graduated from the Technical University in Berlin. In 1930 — 45 he worked at the firm Osram. In 1946 he became professor at the A. Humboldt University (Berlin) and director of the second Institute of Physics of that university, in 1950 director of the Institute of Light Sources of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, and in 1958 of the Physico-Technical Institute. From 1969 he has been director of the Central Institute of Electron Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR.
His main work was on electric discharges in gases, plasma physics and solid-state physics. He studied the physical principles of the operation of light sources, thermal plasma, high-pressure light sources and pulsed sources, luminescence and the conversion of light energy in solids, the physics of the electric arc and electrical breakdown, and plasma-like phenomena in semiconductors.
The National Prize (1951). He was one of the founders of the journal “Science and Progress” and of the physical society of the GDR, and was its chairman.