Jakob Amsler-Laffon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jakob Amsler-Laffon

Jakob Amsler-Laffon (born November 11, 1823 in Stalden near Brugg, today in the municipality of Bözberg , †  January 3, 1912 in Schaffhausen ) was a Swiss mathematician , physicist , engineer and manufacturer . He became known in particular through the invention of the polar planimeter .

biography

His father Jakob Amsler was a farmer, his uncle Samuel Amsler a well-known engraver. After attending the local school in Unterbözberg and the district school in Lenzburg , Amsler graduated from the canton school in Aarau , where he became friends with the later Federal Councilor Emil Welti . He then studied mathematics and physics at the universities of Jena (1843–1844) and Königsberg (1844–1848). Professor Franz Ernst Neumann had a particularly strong influence on him ; his fellow students included Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Siegfried Heinrich Aronhold .

In 1848 Amsler returned to Switzerland and worked at the Geneva observatory . Two years later he completed his habilitation at the University of Zurich , and in 1851 he was elected mathematics and physics teacher at the grammar school in Schaffhausen . There he met the pharmacist's daughter Elise Laffon, whom he married in 1854 and whose family name he added to his own. The couple had two daughters and three sons, the eldest son Alfred Amsler later also becoming a well-known mathematician.

Polar planimeter

Also in 1854, after five years of research, Amsler invented the polar planimeter almost at the same time as Albert Miller von Hauenfels . Although planimeters for determining any area in maps or drawings had been around for four decades, his device far exceeded its predecessors in terms of accuracy. To put his invention to practical use, he set up a precision engineering workshop. In 1858 he gave up teaching and started his own company. In addition to planimeters, it also manufactured integrators, hydrometric measuring devices, hydraulic material testing machines and other precision instruments. From 1885 to 1905 Amsler worked closely with his son Alfred, so that the inventions from that period can only be assigned with difficulty to one or the other. In 1867 the Swiss Army introduced breech loading rifles based on Amsler's plans; they went down in history as the Milbank-Amsler construction.

Amsler was granted honorary citizenship of Schaffhausen in 1867 for his services to industrial promotion, and in 1894 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Königsberg (on the occasion of the 350th anniversary). In 1892 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des Sciences . The Federal Council involved him in assessing weapons-related issues; Consulting activities in this area also took him to Vienna and Saint Petersburg .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter A. Académie des sciences, accessed on October 1, 2019 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Amsler-Laffon, Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss mathematician, physicist, engineer and manufacturer
DATE OF BIRTH November 11, 1823
PLACE OF BIRTH Stalden near Brugg, municipality of Bözberg
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1912
Place of death Schaffhausen