Johann Jacob Ferber

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Johann Jakob Ferber, engraving by Johann Samuel Halle after Johann Christian Heinicke
Johann Jakob Ferber, engraving by Carl Christian Glassbach after JG Groschke

Johann Jacob Ferber (born September 9, 1743 in Karlskrona ; † April 12, 1790 in Bern ) was a Swedish mineralogist and geologist.

Life

Ferber was the son of a pharmacist and studied at Uppsala University . Under the influence of Carl von Linné , he turned to medicine and botany and finally to mineralogy. His teachers were Johan Gottschalk Wallerius and Axel Frederic Cronstedt (in Stockholm). From 1765 to 1770 he was at the Mining College in Stockholm and undertook mineralogical journeys through Sweden. In 1765 he was in Berlin, where he studied with the chemists Johann Heinrich Pott and Andreas Sigismund Marggraf , and he also studied at the Bergakademie Freiberg and Rudolf Erich Raspe in Kassel. Until 1773 he also traveled through France, Italy, visiting the mercury mines in Idrija , Bohemia, England (mines in Derbyshire and Cornwall) and the Netherlands. He also got to know Ignaz von Born , which led to the publication of the first of his geological-mineralogical travel reports about Italy ( Wälschland ) in 1773. Back in Sweden he did not go back to the mining college, although his money had been used up. His home was too small for him and the opportunities there were poor. He became a professor of physics and natural history at the Academia Petrina in Mitau . In 1781 he was invited to a trip through Poland by the Polish king. In 1783 he became a professor and member of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . He turned down an invitation to become a mine director in Siberia (he was already suffering from the cold in Saint Petersburg) and in 1786 accepted an invitation to Berlin, where he became Oberbergrat and a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. The driving force behind his appointment was Mining Minister Friedrich Anton von Heinitz (1725–1802), who wanted to bring him to Berlin as early as 1777 (with a very lucrative offer as a well-paid member of the academy). As Oberbergrat, Ferber visited mines, but was also a professor at the Bergakademie and looked after their collection. His own extensive mineral collection also came to the Bergakademie, as the state bought it after his death in return for a high pension for his widow and daughter. Today it is part of the collection of the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

Since he got to know active volcanoes from his travels in Italy and described them in his travel report (and also as a student of Raspe), he was critical of the Neptunist School of Abraham Gottlob Werner, which was dominant in Germany at the time , and was a volcanist. However, his early death prevented greater influence. According to Ferber (1772), granite was the oldest rock, followed by the slate mountains and the Flötz mountains (limestone, sandstone). This is followed by younger tertiary mountains and volcanic masses. Similar to Raspe, he assumed that volcanically caused basalts had penetrated through the limestone masses of the Alps and lifted them. He was against the (alchemical) transformation of minerals and also opposed rock metamorphosis (Examen hypotheseos de transmutationibus corporum mineralium, Acta Acad. Sci. Petropol. 1780, p. 248). However, he recognized the close connection between gneiss and slate in the Alps. In 1784, Ferber was also a forerunner of Charles Lyell's drift theory (transport of boulders with ice floes in the Diluvial Sea ).

He published mostly in German.

In 1788 he inspected Neuchâtel, part of Prussia, and also visited Switzerland and Burgundy. After half a year in Berlin, he received an offer from the Swiss government to inspect the mining industry. In September 1789 he suffered a stroke in Switzerland that paralyzed him on one side. He was brought to Bern and died there in April 1790.

In 1781 he became a member of the Leopoldina and in 1786 a member of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences . He also became a member of the Academy of Sciences in Siena and the Agricultural Society in Florence and Vicenza. In 1773 he was accepted into the newly founded Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Sciences .

Fonts

He also wrote many reviews for the General German Library of the Berlin publisher Friedrich Nicolai .

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Johann Jacob Ferber  - Sources and full texts

References and comments

  1. ↑ He left them in Sweden during his time in Mitau and Saint Petersburg, but brought them to Berlin
  2. ^ Wilhelm von Gümbel :  Ferber, Johann Jakob . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 629 f.
  3. ↑ According to Wilhelm von Gümbel (ADB article on Ferber) at that time already partially represented by Franz Güssmann , Cosimo Alessandro Collini and others. According to Hölder, Brief History of Geology and Palaeontology, 1989, p. 67, James Hutton also represented the idea of ​​rock transformation, which he called consolidation . The name metamorphosis was later introduced by Charles Lyell .
  4. ^ Letters to B. von Racknitz, 1789
  5. ^ Otfried Wagenbreth : History of Geology in Germany. Enke, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-13-118361-6 ; eBook: Springer Spektrum, Heidelberg 2015, ISBN 978-3-662-44712-3 , p. 120
personal data
SURNAME Ferber, Johann Jacob
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ferber, Johann Jakob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swedish mineralogist and geologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 9, 1743
PLACE OF BIRTH Karlskrona
DATE OF DEATH April 12, 1790
Place of death Bern