Georg Gottlieb Schmidt

Georg Gottlieb Schmidt (born June 10, 1768 in Seeheim , Hesse , † October 8, 1837 in Gießen ) was a German mathematician and physicist .

Life

Schmidt was a full professor of mathematics and physics at the University of Giessen until his death in 1837 and was one of the best-known experimental physicists in German-speaking countries. He was mainly concerned with the determination of mechanical and thermal properties of gases, which is why he was nicknamed "Luftschmidt" by his students.

The son of a civil servant family studied first in Gießen in 1784, then from 1785 in Göttingen with Abraham Gotthelf Kästner and Georg Christoph Lichtenberg . For doctoral and habilitation , however, it was not because of an illness. Nevertheless, the 21-year-old received an extraordinary professorship for mathematics in Giessen through Lichtenberg's recommendation in 1789 and took over the professorship for mathematics in 1790. For the first physics lectures in the winter semester of 1790, he founded the physics cabinet from his own resources, which became the property of the university in 1817. In 1801 he also became head of the astronomical observatory at the University of Giessen. In the context of the 200th anniversary of the university in 1807, Schmidt received his doctorate with the dissertation "On the influence of the eccentricity of the alidadic rule in a protractor" , but the celebrations did not take place until 1808 because of the war unrest .

Schmidt enjoyed a scientific reputation for his work across national borders, but did not accept appointments at the universities of Greifswald (1801) and Heidelberg (1812). With the death of the previous professor, Karl Wilhelm Christian von Müller , Schmidt received a full professorship for physics at the Philosophical Faculty for the first time on April 14, 1817. Because of his poor health, Schmidt was last released from administrative work and was able to give lectures, which his later successor Heinrich Buff took over in the 1930s. With Schmidt's death in 1837, physics was also separated from mathematics, and Hermann Umpfenbach took over the mathematics chair .

Honors

• 1808: Corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
• 1823: Knight's Cross of the Grand Ducal Hessian House and Merit Order
• 1830: Secret Finance Council
• 1836: Secret Finance Councilor

Works (selection)

• About the influence of the eccentricity of the alidad rule on a protractor . Dissertation, University of Giessen 1807.

literature

• Henning Krause: Georg Gottlieb Schmidt (1768-1837) - the "Luftschmidt". A biographical literature report about the Giessen physicist and mathematician . GNT-Verlag, Diepholz 2007, ISBN 978-3-928186-79-7 .
• Henning Krause:  Schmidt, Georg Gottlieb. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 189 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Wikisource: Georg Gottlieb Schmidt  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Georg Gottlieb Schmidt in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Georg Gottlieb Schmidt  in the German Digital Library