Institute journal Zeitschrift für Naturforschung. This was the first publication of his theory in a peer reviewed scientific journal. 1980s In 1982 Heim's mass formula was programmed on a computer at the German Electron Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg with the assistance of some resident scientists. Up to that point, Heim had not yet confided in other theoretical physicists on the details of the mass formula derivation. Hence, the DESY results were not widely published and disseminated for academic scrutiny. That year Walter Dröscher, a theorist at the Vienna Patent Office, began to work with Heim. The first result of their collaboration cumulated in the second volume of Heim's major work, appearing in 1984. 2000s Heim died in Northeim in 2001 at age 75. In 2004, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) awarded the winning paper in the nuclear and future flight field to a retired Austrian patent officer named Walter Dröscher and Jochem Häuser, a physicist and professor of computer science at the University of Applied Sciences in Salzgitter, Germany. They turned the theoretical framework of Burkhard Heim into a proposal for an experimental test for a propulsion device that is thought to theoretically be able to travel at rates faster than the speed of light. Hans Theodor Auerbach, a theoretical physicist and colleague of Heim has stated that, "As far as I understand it, Heim theory is ingenious," and, "I think that physics will take this direction in the future". In 2008, the AIAA Nuclear and Future Flight Propulsion Technical Committee published the following statement: Much research was conducted this year on the investigation of the experimental basis of the existence of gravity-like fields that cannot be described by conventional gravitation; that is, by the accumulation of mass. Investigations emphasized a geometrized approach termed Extended Heim Theory, which extends Einstein's idea of geometrization of physics by employing the additional concepts of Heim. Life and health Heim had to undergo a series of at least 50 operations after a laboratory explosion that resulted in the loss of both of his hands. He had found that intense concentration on the study of Einstein's relativity theory had helped him control the pain in his arms mentally and physically. The loss of his hands and serious diminution of his eyesight apparently resulted in Heim acquiring an eidetic, acoustic memory. He was claimed to rarely forget a formula if he heard it