Abstract
IN the first week of July occur the bicentenary of the birth of the German physicist and writer, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, of GÖttingen, and the centenary of the birth of the German chemist, Albert Ladenburg, both of whom were well known in British scientific circles. Lichtenberg was born on July 1,1742, at Oberramstadt near Darmstadt, and was the youngest child in a family of eighteen. As a youth he became a hunchback and was thus confined more or less to sedentary occupations. Entering the University of GÖttingen at the age of twenty-one, he afterwards worked at the Observatory and when twenty-eight was made professor of mathematics. His first visit to England was made in 1770 ; his second in 1774. He was then made a fellow of the Royal Society. Returning to GÖttingen in 1775, he became tutor to the Dukes of Clarence, Cumberland and Cambridge, and two years later was chosen to succeed! Erxleben in the chair of physics, a post he held until his death on February 24, 1799. As? physicist he is remembered for his observations on the figures produced by fine dust on the surfaces of electrified plane surfaces. His electrical experiments led to a correspondence with Volta. Lichtenberg was also well known as a friend of Garrick and a writer on Hogarth.
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Two Eminent German Men of Science. Nature 149, 727–728 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149727d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149727d0