Kaplan was born in Mürzzuschlag, Austria into a railroad worker's family. He graduated from high school in Vienna in 1895, after which he attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and specialised in diesel engines. From 1900 to 1901 he was drafted into military service in Pula.
After working in Vienna with a specialisation in motors, he moved to the German Technical University in Brno to conduct research at the institute of civil engineering. He spent the next three decades of his life in Brno, and nearly all his inventions and research are connected with his professorship there. In 1913 he was appointed head of the institute for water turbines.
In 1912 he published his most notable work: the Kaplan turbine, a revolutionary water turbine that was especially fitted to produce electricity from large streams with only a moderate incline. From 1912 to 1913 he received four patents on these kinds of turbines.
In 1918 the first Kaplan turbine with 26 kW power and a diameter of 60 cm was built by the Storek construction company for a textile manufacturer in Lower Austria. This turbine was used until 1955 and today is exhibited at the Technisches Museum Wien. After the success of the first Kaplan turbines they started being used worldwide and remain one of the most widely used kinds of water turbines.
In 1926 and 1934 Kaplan received honorary doctorates. He died of a stroke in 1934 at Unterach am Attersee, Austria.
Kaplan was honored and featured on the 1000 Austrian schilling banknote in 1961.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Kaplan
Schauberger
The pressure turbine
On the 16th of May 1913 Prof. Dr. Viktor Kaplan was able to inform the world's leading turbine manufacturers that he had succeeded in achieving rotational velocities and efficiencies with his newly designed impeller, which far exceeded existing norms. [The Energy Evolution - Harnessing Free Energy from Nature, Cadaverine Poison in Ray-Form - Ptomaine Radiation]
This was confirmed by Prof. Budau at the test stand on the 22nd of June 1922. With this Viktor Kaplan saw himself at the culmination of years-long experimental endeavours, when suddenly an unexpected setback occurred, causing a severe nervous breakdown which crippled his ability to work. [The Energy Evolution - Harnessing Free Energy from Nature, Cadaverine Poison in Ray-Form - Ptomaine Radiation]
When what had been achieved experimentally with the test model was implemented practically, mysterious cavitation phenomena appeared, which destroyed even steel turbine blades within a short space of time.
It was only after protracted and expensive experiments with alloys that these decomposive phenomena could be sufficiently inhibited to enable the manufacture of this turbine system to begin. This was believed and is still so believed today, to be of such great service to industry and the economy, that a few companies licensed by Viktor Kaplan (because of the lucrative business opportunities) spared no material expense or intellectual effort in order to eliminate these decomposive effects, which according to measurements were equivalent to peak pressures of about 32,000 atmospheres (atm). [The Energy Evolution - Harnessing Free Energy from Nature, Cadaverine Poison in Ray-Form - Ptomaine Radiation]