Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein
Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (born January 30, 1723 in Wernigerode , † July 6, 1795 in Frederiksberg ) was a German naturalist.
Life
Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein was born as the second youngest son of the high school teacher Thomas Andreas Kratzenstein in the small residential town of Wernigerode of the Counts of Stolberg am Harz . He attended the lyceum in his hometown, where his father taught. As a teenager, he demonstrated experiments with the electrifying machine to Count Heinrich Ernst zu Stolberg-Wernigerode and often visited the Brocken . He began studying natural sciences in 1742 at the University of Halle (Saale) .
In 1746 he acquired his master's degree and received his doctorate. As a private lecturer, he then taught medicine and natural science at the university, but already in 1748 accepted the call to the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg . From 1748 Kratzenstein was a member of the Leopoldina , from 1753 of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences . In Saint Petersburg he worked as a professor of mathematics and mechanics until 1753, before receiving a professorship in experimental physics at the University of Copenhagen , where he worked for 33 years and was rector four times. Kratzenstein also spent his old age in Denmark . In 1791 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . During the great fire in Copenhagen in 1795, he lost his extensive collection of instruments and manuscripts. A month later he died in Frederiksberg and was buried in St. Petrikirche. He donated part of his fortune to the chair of physics at the university.
Services
At an early stage, Kratzenstein dealt with possibilities for airship travel . He was also interested in astronomy, navigation, aviation, meteorology, and alchemy. However, his special field of research was the effect of electricity on the human body. We owe him numerous discoveries in this area, for example the Kratzenstein vesicles . Kratzenstein is a co-founder of physical medicine using electricity and designed one of the first electrifying machines. He applied electrotherapy to patients at an early stage (see also Johann Gottlob Krüger ).
At the same time he developed a series of five reed pipes in 1780 in response to a question from the St. Petersburg Academy, each of which could synthetically generate a vowel (namely A, E, I, O, U). The writing was published in Petersburg in Latin and Russian; in French the following year in Paris. In it, Kratzenstein developed resounding reed pipes, probably based on the model of the Chinese mouth organ Sheng , and is considered the first European "inventor" (more likely: discoverer) of this special reed pipe shape. The principle of the reed pipe was discovered several times in the following decades, possibly independently of one another.
Kratzenstein's reed pipes had resonators with complex shapes, which, however, had no connection with the anatomical conditions in humans, but, according to Kratzenstein's own statement, simply had the shape with which they best did their respective task. Robert Willis showed in 1832 that Kratzenstein's resonator shapes were unnecessary, since resonators in the form of cylindrical tubes of different lengths serve the same purpose just as well and better.
A few years later, Wolfgang von Kempelen developed a “speaking machine” with which he was the first to succeed in producing words and shorter sentences. Muted reeds were used as reeds.
Honors
On March 24, 2011, the city council of Wernigerode decided to name a street in today's commercial and industrial area "Smatvelde" after Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein.
literature
- Susan Splinter: Between Utility and Imitation . A biography of the scholar Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–1795). Peter Lang, Frankfurt (Main) 2007, ISBN 978-3-631-56958-0 .
- Sieghard Scheffczyk: From Wernigerode to Europe - The eventful life of Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein . In: Neue Wernigeröder Zeitung 4, 2011, p. 21
- Eduard Jacobs : Kratzenstein, Christian Gottlieb . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1883, pp. 57-61.
- Wolf D. Kühnelt: Kratzenstein, Christian Gottlieb. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 677 f. ( Digitized version ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein in the catalog of the German National Library
- Correspondence between Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein and Carl von Linné
- Hartmut Traunmüller: History of Speech Synthesis
Individual evidence
- ↑ Member entry by Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on August 10, 2015.
- ^ List of rectors on the University of Copenhagen website
- ^ Members of the previous academies. Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities , accessed on April 17, 2015 .
- ^ Christiani Theophili Kratzensteinii: Tentamen resolvendi problema ab Academia Scientiarum Imperiali Petropolitana ad annum 1780 publice propositum. archive.org , digitized version of the MDZ , digitized version of the SUB Goettingen
- ^ Kratzenstein: ESSAI Sur la naissance & la formation des Voyelles , in Observations sur la physique, sur l'histoire naturelle et sur les arts , Volume 21, pp. 358-380, 1782 digitized
- ^ CG Kratzenstein: Tentamen resolvendi problema. Translated and commented by Christian Korpiun. In study texts on language communication. Volume 82, edited by Rüdiger Hoffmann. TUDpress, Dresden 2016, ISBN 978-3-95908-054-5 .
- ↑ Robert Willis: From vowel tones and reed pipes digitized (PDF)
- ^ Volksstimme Magdeburg: New street names are reminiscent of important children of the city. Retrieved October 31, 2019 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kratzenstein, Christian Gottlieb |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German physicist, university professor and natural scientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 30, 1723 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wernigerode |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 6, 1795 |
| Place of death | Frederiksberg |