Julius Eugen Wagner

Julius Eugen Wagner (born July 3, 1857 in Hanau , † July 17, 1924 in Leipzig ) was a German chemist, professor at the University of Leipzig and the first university lecturer for chemistry didactics in Germany.

Wagner went to school in Hanau, Düsseldorf and Erfurt and from 1874 studied natural sciences and in particular chemistry at the universities of Strasbourg, Leipzig and Gießen, passed the senior teacher examination in 1881 and received his doctorate in Leipzig in 1883 ( on the viscosity of salt solutions ). Afterwards he was teaching assistant there, first with Gustav Heinrich Wiedemann and then with Wilhelm Ostwald . In 1898 he completed his habilitation in Leipzig ( Maaßanalytische Studien ), became a private lecturer and in 1901 was given a teaching position for didactics of chemistry, which in 1904 became a scheduled extraordinary professorship. This was the first professorship for chemistry didactics in Germany, which was established at the urging of Wilhelm Ostwald, but which was not continued after Wagner's death. Ostwald's successor, Max Le Blanc, and then Wilhelm Böttger (1871–1949) took over the training for the higher teaching post, but Wagner's associate professor was left to applied chemistry.

At the beginning of his career, Ostwald himself had also taught at a school (the district school in Dorpat ) for financial reasons , but could hardly carry out experiments there in chemistry (he invited the students to the Physics Institute of the University of Dorpat on Sundays to demonstrate experiments to get). What bothered Ostwald about university chemistry lessons was that it was tailored to the training of analysts and did not take into account didactic aspects for teacher training. After Ostwald left the university in 1906, Wagner's commitment to research on chemistry didactics also declined (most recently he published on this in 1909).

From 1921 Wagner could no longer teach regularly for health reasons and in 1923 he had to stop lecturing altogether.

As a chemist, he dealt with physical chemistry (theory of dissociation and solutions) and analytical chemistry (measurement analysis). In Leipzig he was also involved in the beginner internships, which made Ostwald seem suitable to take on a professorship for chemistry didactics.

Fonts

• The first lesson in chemistry, Leipzig: Barth 1903

Web links

• Catalog of professors at the University of Leipzig
• Gisela Boeck: Julius Wagner, Germany's first professor for chemistry didactics (pdf)