Johann Jakob Balmer

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Johann Jakob Balmer

Johann Jakob Balmer (born May 1, 1825 in Lausen , Canton Basel-Landschaft , † March 12, 1898 in Basel ) was a Swiss mathematician and physicist . With the Balmer series , he provided an important formula for spectroscopy .

Life

Johann Jakob Balmer-Rinck (1825–1898), teacher, researcher (“Balmer Formula”), mathematician, physicist. Grave in the Wolfgottesacker cemetery, Basel
Grave in the Wolfgottesacker cemetery , Basel

Balmer, son of a brickworks owner and politician, first studied philology and mathematics at the University of Basel . This was followed by a degree in architecture at the University of Karlsruhe and at the University of Berlin . In 1849 he received his doctorate on the cycloid at the University of Basel .

From 1859 until his death in 1898 he worked as a mathematics teacher (typing and arithmetic teacher) at the Lower Daughter School in Basel. In addition, he worked as a private lecturer at the University of Basel from 1865 to 1890, where his core area was descriptive geometry .

In addition to his teaching and research activities, he also held various public offices: He sat on the Basel Grand Council, served as school inspector and poor relief worker and was a member of the church council.

In 1850 he married Christine Pauline Rinck, the daughter of a pastor from Grenzach. The couple had six children, including the Swiss painter Wilhelm Balmer .

plant

Balmer was very diverse in his interests. He dealt with Kabbalistics and numerology , for example he calculated the number of steps in pyramids or the floor plan of biblical temples. He also dealt with architecture, social hygiene and social housing , and beyond that with the common basic questions of science, philosophy and religion.

In 1885 he found a simple formula that made it possible to reproduce the wavelength for a series of spectral lines of the element hydrogen , which the Swede Anders Jonas Ångström had previously determined in 1866. Balmer found that the wavelengths of the hydrogen spectrum were the difference between the reciprocal values ​​of the squares of integers, with a common factor that was later called the Rydberg constant ( Balmer series ).

Only the development of quantum physics at the beginning of the 20th century by Niels Bohr (1913) provided an explanation for the Balmer formula.

The lunar crater Balmer and the asteroid (12755) Balmer are named after him.

Fonts

  • Workers' apartments in and around Basel (with plans and cost calculations for a housing estate built across the width) 1853
  • The Prophet Ezekiel's Face from the Temple, 1858
  • Natural exploration and the modern worldview, 1868
  • Housing evacuation 1878
  • The worker's apartment, Basel 1883
  • Note on the spectral lines of hydrogen, Negotiations of the Natural Research Society 7, 1885
  • The free perspective, 1887
  • Thoughts on Matter, Spirit and God, Aphorisms, 1891
  • A new formula for spectral waves, Leipzig 1897

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Winfried R. Pötsch, Annelore Fischer and Wolfgang Müller with the collaboration of Heinz Cassebaum : Lexicon of important chemists , VEB Bibliographisches Institut Leipzig, 1988, p. 26, ISBN 3-323-00185-0 .
personal data
SURNAME Balmer, Johann Jakob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Balmer-Rinck, Johann Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss mathematician and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH May 1, 1825
PLACE OF BIRTH Lausen , Canton of Basel-Country
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1898
Place of death Basel