Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
| Gustav Kirchhoff | |
|---|---|
 Prof. Dr. phil. Kirchhoff | |
| Born | 12 March 1824 Königsberg, Province of East Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation |
| Died | 17 October 1887 (aged 63) Berlin, Province of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire |
| Fields | Physics Chemistry |
| Institutions | University of Berlin University of Breslau University of Heidelberg |
| Alma mater | University of Königsberg |
| Notable students | Max Planck |
| Known for | Kirchhoff's circuit laws Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation Kirchhoff's laws of spectroscopy Kirchhoff's law of thermochemistry |
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German scientist and one of the great physicists of the 19th century. Kirchhoff is known for his rules of electrical circuits describing the dependence of electrical voltage, electrical current and electrical resistance, which he found in 1845. These so-called Kirchhoff laws are fundamental for the construction and analysis of electrical circuits and electrical engineering in general. However, they were discovered as early as 1833 by Carl Friedrich Gauß during his experiments on electricity.
With Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen, Kirchhoff developed spectral analysis in 1859.[1] This determined the chemical composition of the sun, the basis for all further astrophysics. Among his many students were Ludwig Boltzmann, Heinrich Hertz, Max Planck, Alfred Pringsheim, Richard Anschütz and British physicist Coutts Trotter (1865/66).
Contents
Life
Kirchhoff studied mathematics and physics at the University of Königsberg from 1842 to 1847 under, among others, Franz Neumann (physics) and Friedrich Julius Richelot (mathematics). In 1847, he received his doctorate in Königsberg and in 1848, he completed his habilitation in Berlin.[2] There he became friends with the two physiologists Emil du Bois-Reymond and Hermann Helmholtz.
From 1850 to 1854, as an extraordinary professor, he gave lectures in Breslau. This is where he would meet Robert Bunsen for the first time in 1851. Here Bunsen began experimenting with iodine azide. From these findings he developed iodometry, which is still of great importance today.
Kirchhoff was called to the University of Heidelberg in 1854, where he collaborated in spectroscopic work with Robert Bunsen. In 1857, he calculated that an electric signal in a resistanceless wire travels along the wire at the speed of light. He proposed his law of thermal radiation in 1859, and gave a proof in 1861. Together Kirchhoff and Bunsen invented the spectroscope, which Kirchhoff used to pioneer the identification of the elements in the Sun, showing in 1859 that the Sun contains sodium. He and Bunsen discovered caesium and rubidium in 1861.
At Heidelberg, he ran a mathematico-physical seminar, modelled on Franz Ernst Neumann's, with the mathematician Leo Koenigsberger. Among those who attended this seminar were Arthur Schuster and Sofia Kovalevskaya. He was prorector of the university in 1865/66 and worked together with Hermann von Helmholtz and later in Berlin, had a lively letter exchange with Woldemar Voigt.
From 1862 he was a corresponding member of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Kirchhoff described his time in Heidelberg as the happiest of his life. He turned down an offer three times, in 1870 and 1872 at the universities of Berlin and Würzburg and in 1874 as director at the newly founded Astrophysical Institute in Potsdam. At the end of 1874, however, he decided to accept a position at the Prussian Academy and as a full professor at the University of Berlin.
On 7 March 1875, there was a celebratory farewell dinner for Kirchhoff (going to Berlin) and Leo Koenigsberger (going to Dresden).[3] On 20 March 1875, Kirchhoff took the train and travelled for the next four weeks. On 22 April 1875, he arrived in Berlin where he had accepted the first chair dedicated specifically to theoretical physics at Berlin. Teching started on 28 April. But adjusting to life in Berlin was difficult. Wife Luise mourned Heidelberg very much, and for Kirchhoff himself the change was enormous. In Heidelberg he had an institute, lecture hall and apartment in one house; in Berlin he was far from the university and academy.
In Berlin, Kirchhoff led a quiet but rich scholarly life, just as the academy intended; However, his main and favorite activity was the lectures at the university, on which he put a lot of effort. This resulted in the first course lecture in theoretical physics, divided into four semesters: mathematical optics, theory of heat, theory of electricity and magnetism, mechanics of solid and liquid bodies, which Kirchhoff gave regularly from the winter semester of 1875/76.
In Berlin, Kirchhoff made new friends with Werner von Siemens and the industrialist Gustav Hansemann, who owned a private laboratory and with whom Kirchhoff occasionally experimented. In addition to his obligations to the academy and the university, Kirchhoff also took part in other scientific life in the capital, for example in the Electrotechnical Association, the Physical Society and the Order pour le merite. He retired in 1886.
Health issues
Kirchhoff suffered the first disruption in his life in 1860 when he strained his eyes while working on the solar spectrum. His first major stroke of fate struck him in 1866; He sprained his foot in a fall on the stairs, had to use a wheelchair for a while and then used crutches for five years. He never completely got rid of the foot problem.
Around 1880, although only 56 years old, Kirchhoff began to suffer. In the summer semester of 1884, he had to stop his lectures on the urgent advice of doctors. In the winter semester of 1885/86, he took up the lectures again with great effort. Then dizziness and fever attacks appeared, the cause of which is suspected to be a brain tumor. He endured his sufferings with patience and gentleness.[4]
Death
Kirchhoff died in the morning of 17 October 1887 after during a fever attack, and was buried in the St Matthäus Kirchhof Cemetery in Schöneberg, Berlin (just a few meters from the graves of the Brothers Grimm). Leopold Kronecker is buried in the same cemetery. His grave still exists today as an honorary grave (Ehrengrab) of the city of Berlin.
Family
His parents were the justice councilor and district judge in Königsberg Carl Friedrich Kirchhoff and his wife Johanne Henriette, née Wittke. His brother Carl Johann Kirchhoff (1820–1893) was an Imperial judge (Reichsgerichtsrat).
Marriages
Clara
In 1857 Kirchhoff married his fiancée Clara Juliana Amalie Richelot (1838–1869), a daughter of the Königsberg mathematician Friedrich Julius Richelot. With her, Kirchhoff had the two sons Paul Friedrich Robert (1858–1904), an officer of the Prussian Army (finally Hauptmann z. D.), and Carl Gustav Ernst (1859–1943), a surgeon, and the two daughters Julia Clara Paulina (1860–1932) and Evelina Anna (1868–1939), who were born in Heidelberg and reached adulthood. The son Friedrich Adolf, born in 1864, died after only nine months on 15 March 1865. The daughter Julia (1860–1932) from this marriage was married from 1881 to the geologist Carl Wilhelm Franz von Branca, who had been widowed since 1878, and whose first wife Catharina (1850–1878) was the daughter of Hermann von Helmholtz.
Luise
After the death of his first wife, Kirchhoff married Genovefa Karoline Sophie Luise Brömmel (b. 1838) from Goslar on 6 December 1872,[5] who worked at the Heidelberg Eye Clinic. The marriage was childless but very happy.[6]
Memberships
- Natural History and Medicine Association in Heidelberg (co-founder and member)
- 1861 Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin)
- Corresponding member (Korrespondierendes Mitglied) on 24 October 1861
- Non-local member (Auswärtiges Mitglied) on 5 May 1870 (confirmed on 1 June 1870)
- Full member (Ordentliches Mitglied) on 20 December 1875
- 1862 Göttinger Akademie der Wissenschaften
- 1882 Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences
- 1864 American Philosophical Society
- 1868 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh
- 1868 Académie royale des Sciences
- 1868 Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
- 1870 American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1870 Académie des sciences in Paris
- 1875 Royal Society
- 1883 National Academy of Sciences
- 1884 Königlich Niederländische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)
Awards, decorations and honours (selection)
Awards
- Rumford Medal (1862) for his researches on the fixed lines of the solar spectrum, and on the inversion of the bright lines in the spectra of artificial light.
- Swedish Royal Order of the North Star, Knight's Cross in 1865
- Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts (1874)[7]
- Cothenius Medal of the Leopoldina (1876)
- Davy Medal of the Royal Society in London (1877)
- Matteucci Medal (1877)
- Janssen Medal of the French Academy of Sciences (1887)
Honours
Kirchhoff was appointed Grand Ducal Councilor of Baden (Hofrath/Hofrat) in 1865. The lunar crater Kirchhoff and the asteroid (10358) Kirchhoff are named after him, as is the “Kirchhoff Institute for Physics” (KIP) at the University of Heidelberg. On 15 February 1974, the Deutsche Bundespost Berlin issued a special stamp (MiNo. 465) to mark his 150th birthday. A street in Berlin-Adlershof, Bad Dürkheim and Heidelberg bears his name. The Bunsen–Kirchhoff Award for spectroscopy is named after Kirchhoff and his colleague, Robert Bunsen.
Writings (excerpt)
- (1882) Gesammelte Abhandlungen (in de). Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth.
- (1891) Vorlesungen über Electricität und Magnetismus (in de). Leipzig: Benedictus Gotthelf Teubner.
- Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik. 4 vols., B. G. Teubner, Leipzig 1876–1894.
- Vol. 1: Mechanik. 1. Auflage, B. G. Teubner, Leipzig 1876 (online).
- Vol. 2: Mathematische Optik. B. G. Teubner, Leipzig 1891 (Herausgegeben von Kurt Hensel, online).
- Vol. 3: Electricität und Magnetismus. B. G. Teubner, Leipzig 1891 (Herausgegeben von Max Planck, online).
- Vol. 4: Theorie der Wärme. B. G. Teubner, Leipzig 1894, Herausgegeben von Max Planck[8]
See also
Further reading
- Carl von Voit: Nekrolog auf Gustav Robert Kirchhoff , 1888, pp. 181–186
References
- ↑ Starting in 1859, Bunsen and Kirchhoff carried out systematic investigations of spectra and were the first to prove with certainty that luminous substances can be identified using the spectral lines they emit. The first spectral apparatus by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, with which they founded spectral analysis, was a makeshift device consisting of two telescopes and a rotating prism.
- ↑ Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert
- ↑ Mein Leben by Leo Koenigsberger
- ↑ Gustav Kirchhoffs Lebensweg
- ↑ Kirchhoff, Gustav Robert, p. 191
- ↑ Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
- ↑ Gustav Robert Kirchhoff
- ↑ Merritt, Ernest (1895). "Review of Vorlesungen über mathematische Physik. Vol. IV. Theorie der Wärme by Gustav Kirchhoff, edited by Max Planck". Physical Review: 73–75. American Physical Society.
