Herbert Kramer was born on August 25, 1928 in Weimar, Germany, the eldest of three children. His father was a civil servant and his mother looked after his home. Although neither of his parents graduated from high school, they valued their children's education. (When Dr. Cromer finally decided to study physics, he recalled, his father asked what it was and if he could make a living at it.)
Young Herbert quickly showed an aptitude for mathematics and physics, but he also had a boring and disruptive personality. In his math class, he got into trouble by teaching other students methods they didn't understand, so his teacher made a deal with him. “If you don't disrupt the class, you don't have to submit your homework and we'll give you a guarantee.'' Top grade. He continued to honor his contract.
After graduating from high school, he enrolled at the University of Jena, about 24 miles southeast of Weimar. The entire region, located in East Germany, was by then under Soviet jurisdiction, and Dr. Kramer, like many of his students and professors, was resentful under a restrictive government. After only a year, he decided to retire.
This was during the Berlin Blockade in 1948, when the Allies were airlifting supplies into West Berlin after the Soviet Union had cut off access to railways, roads, and canals. Dr Cromer, who worked for the technology company Siemens over the summer, waited in line at the airport for two days before taking off on a British plane.
Before leaving, he wrote to several universities seeking admission. He eventually found a position at the University of Göttingen, where he was supervised by Fritz Sauter, who specialized in solid state physics. After Dr. Cromer gave a colloquium on new ideas about transistors, Dr. Sauter suggested that he submit a thesis to the master's program in theoretical physics. A year later, in 1952, Dr. Cromer received his Ph.D.