Gustaf von Engeström

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Gustaf von Engeström , also Gustav von Engeström , (born August 1, 1738 in Lund , † August 12, 1813 in Skogs-Tibble near Uppsala ) was a Swedish mining engineer, mineralogist and chemist.

Life

Engeström was the son of Johan Engeström (1699–1777), professor of theology and bishop in Lund and knighted in 1752, and Benzelstierna was born by Margaret Engeström. Of his six brothers, Gustaf von Engeström and his youngest brother Adolph went into mining.

He studied in Lund (legal exam 1755) and was at the Bergskollegium in Stockholm from 1756 (as a student of Georg Brandt and Axel Frederic Cronstedt ) and undertook study trips to Norway, England, Germany (Prussia) and the Netherlands in 1764/65. In England he trained in chemistry, including in the laboratory of William Lewis and continued the translation of his teacher Cronstedt's mineralogy book into English. After that he was at the Bergkollegium from 1764, first in the analysis of ores, from 1768 Münzwardein , from 1774 assessor and from 1781 Bergrat. He declined an honorable invitation to take up a higher position in Russian service and there were also negotiations in Prussia through Friedrich II. To bring him to the Berlin Academy as a chemist. He inherited a family estate in Skogs-Tibble in Uppsala municipality from his uncle Benzelstierna, where he retired in 1794. The estate business, however, was not going well. In 1801 he received the silver medal of the Patriotic Society for a treatise on a price question about pests in cabbage, in which he reported from his own experience.

He also taught chemistry and mineralogy at the Bergskollegium. Engeström temporarily worked with August Nordenskiöld (1754–1792), the alchemist in the service of King Gustav III.

He became known for a description of the use of soldering tubes (which still came from Cronstedt) in the analysis of minerals, derived from lectures during his stay in London in 1765 and then translated into Swedish (first published in English in 1770). He published works on mineralogy and chemistry (including recovery of mercury from mirror glass, recovery of silver from silver chloride by reaction with potassium carbonate, alum production, minerals from China). From 1781 to 1784 his larger work Laboratorium chymicum appeared and he published a French guide to the Swedish mines. He put together mineral collections for the Prince of Condé in France and for Catherine the Great in Russia.

In 1770 he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and in 1774 and 1782 its president.

family

He was married to Abela Charlotta Lagerbring (1752–1785), daughter of the well-known historian Sven Lagerbring and a mother from the Lagercreutz family. One daughter married in Poland, another married Carl Johan Adlercreutz , the only son Sven Johan became court manager.

His brothers were well-known personalities: Jacob von Engeström (1752-1803) was a high official and involved in the conspiracy against Gustav III. involved and was therefore sentenced to imprisonment (but the sentence was later mitigated), Jonas von Engeström (1737-1807) was a judge, Johan von Engeström (1743-1807) was a politician (member of the aristocratic opposition to the king and also the participation of Conspiracy against Gustav III suspected), Lars von Engeström (1751–1826) was Foreign Minister and Adolph von Engeström (1753–1825) was a senior mining official.

Fonts

  • Cronstedt: An Essay Towards a System of Mineralogy. London 1770 (Engström in the appendix on the use of soldering tubes).
    • German translation of his Lötrohr-Abhandlung: Mr. Gustav von Engeström's description of a mineralogical pocket laboratory and in particular the use of the blowpipe in mineralogy. Greifswald: Anton Ferdinand Rose 1774, 2nd edition 1782 (notes by Christian Ehrenfried Weigel (1748–1831))
    • Swedish edition: Beskrifning på et Mineralogiskt Fick-Laboratorium och i synnerhet Nyttan af Blåsröret ut i Mineralogien. Stockholm 1773 (translation from English by Anders Retzius).
  • Guide du Voyageur aux Carrières et Mines de Svede. Stockholm 1796.
  • Valley om mineralogiens hinder och framsteg i senare Åren. Stockholm 1774 (speech as President of the Academy).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Already during his stay in London he was interested in minerals from East Asia.
  2. ^ Engeström, in The Mineralogical Record
personal data
SURNAME Engeström, Gustaf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Engeström, Gustav von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish mining engineer, mineralogist and chemist
DATE OF BIRTH August 1, 1738
PLACE OF BIRTH Lund
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1813
Place of death Skogs-Tibble near Uppsala