Robert Mayer

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Julius Robert von Mayer
Behind glass painting of the Mayer family around 1820/25 with their parents and two of three sons: probably Gustav and Robert
Robert Mayer monument on Heilbronn market square
Draft for the memorial by Robert Mayer in Heilbronn, wood engraving, from a gazebo in 1891
Robert Mayer's gravestone in the old cemetery .
Walter Maisak: Robert Mayer - Conservation of Energy from 1958

Julius Robert von Mayer , before 1867 Julius Robert Mayer (born November 25, 1814 in Heilbronn , † March 20, 1878 ibid), was a German physician and physician who did physiological research. He was one of the first scientists to formulate the First Law of Thermodynamics, which is important for physics , chemistry and medicine .

Life

Julius Robert Mayer grew up in Heilbronn as the youngest of three sons of the pharmacist Christian Mayer in Heilbronn Rose Pharmacy on. He came from a respected Heilbronn family and is related to Philipp Melanchthon and Johannes Reuchlin .

While his two older brothers Friedrich (1805–1872) and Gustav Mayer (1810–1852) took up the pharmacist profession like their father, Robert Mayer studied medicine at the University of Tübingen from 1832 to 1837 , where he joined the Corps Guestphalia Tübingen and graduated in 1838 and passed the state examination . Between 1837 and 1838 he was suspended from the university for a year because of his participation in an unauthorized, apolitical student association and “unauthorized attendance at a museum ball in improper clothing”. After a stay in Paris (1839/40) he was hired as a ship's doctor on a Dutch three-master named Java for a trip to Batavia in 1840 . Although he was hardly interested in physical phenomena before starting this trip, the observations - for example that storm-lashed waves are warmer than calm seas - prompted him to think deeply about the laws of nature, in particular about the physical phenomenon of heat and the question, "whether the directly developed heat (heat of combustion) alone or whether the sum of the directly and indirectly developed amounts of heat goes into account of the combustion process". After his return in February 1841, Mayer devoted all his energy to solving this problem.

In 1841 he settled in Heilbronn, was elected chief medical officer, married Wilhelmine Closs (1816–1899) the following year and lived in Kirchhöfle 13 from 1842 until his death in 1878 . In Heilbronn he met his friend again, the math and physics teacher Carl Wilhelm Baur , whom he had first met in Paris, with whom he corresponded from 1841 to 1844, and who gave him lessons in mathematics and mechanics.

Mayer hypothesized that the human body's heat production decreases at high temperatures, since his physiological observations in the tropics observed an unusually bright red color in the venous blood, which he attributed to a reduced “combustion” of oxygen.

He sent a treatise on the quantitative and qualitative determination of forces to Johann Christian Poggendorff's Annalen der Physik , in which he postulated a “law of conservation of force” (meaning energy). As it contained fundamental physical errors, it was initially not published. Undeterred, Mayer pursued the idea further and dealt with the Tübingen physics professor Johann Gottlieb Nörrenberg , who rejected his hypothesis, but gave him a valuable suggestion as to how he could test it experimentally.

If kinetic energy into heat energy converted, would water be heating by shaking. Mayer was not only able to provide this proof, but also determined the quantitative factor of the conversion, the mechanical heat equivalent . He published the result of his investigations in 1842 in the May issue of Justus von Liebig's Annalen der Chemie und Pharmacie under the title Comments on the forces of inanimate nature . In his booklet Organic Movement in Connection with Metabolism (1845) he was able to specify the numerical value of the heat equivalent, initially with 365  kpm = 1  kcal , later improved to 425 kpm; the exact number is 427 kpm. This relation says that work and heat are equivalent to one another and can be converted into one another as different forms of energy in the same ratio as mentioned above. This theorem is called the First Law of Heat and was the forerunner of the general law of conservation of energy that Hermann von Helmholtz formulated in 1847.

Mayer was aware of the great importance of his discovery, but his inability to express himself scientifically, his propensity for speculation and his avowed religiosity did not earn him the desired reputation as a scientist. The contemporary physicists rejected his energy conservation law. He even received unworthy hostility from the great physicists Hermann von Helmholtz and James Prescott Joule . Mayer's qualifications in physics were questioned and he was slandered.

After two of his children died in quick succession in 1848, his nerves were completely shattered. A suicide attempt on May 18, 1850 was followed by stays in the Kennenburg asylums near Esslingen and Winnenden . After his release, he was a broken man. After the death of his brother Gustav in 1852, he took his two daughters into his home. It was not until 1860 that he hesitantly ventured into the public again. However, in the meantime his scientific fame had grown. So he received a belated appreciation of his performance, even though he could no longer really enjoy it. His creative urge was gone. He remained in the domestic sphere, devoting his last years to the medical profession, and died in 1878 at the age of 63.

On the bronze statue of Mayer by the sculptor Wilhelm von Rümann, erected in 1892 on the market square in Heilbronn, there are lines of poetry reminding of the discovery of energy conservation:

     Where movement is created,
     heat disappears.
     Where movement disappears there is
     heat.
     The
     forces of the universe remain ,
     the form only passes,
     the essence persists.

The memorial was moved from the market square to the south end of the avenue in 1939 , was in the city park from 1956 and did not return to the market square until 1990.

Honors, awards

The vocational school, technical school and master school for, among other things, tiled stove and air heating installers, heating installers and the only master school for coppersmiths in Stuttgart at Weimarstrasse 26 bears the name of the famous citizen of Heilbronn. He is also the namesake of a street in Frankfurt-Bockenheim near the former Bockenheim university campus.

  • On November 3, 2014, a stamp was issued for Mayer's 200th birthday.

reception

An internationally unaccepted unit of measurement for heat capacity , the Mayer , was named after him. Since 1979 the VDI Society for Energy Technology (today: VDI Society for Energy and Environment) has awarded the Robert Mayer Prize for outstanding journalistic achievements in the fields of energy technology and the energy industry.

The DEFA shot the feature film Robert Mayer - The doctor from Heilbronn ; the premiere took place on October 28, 1955.

In the Haus der Stadtgeschichte Heilbronn, various exhibits on Mayer's family, life and work are exhibited and explained, including the model of the blood circulation he constructed around 1850 .

On November 3rd, 2014, Deutsche Post AG issued a postage stamp for Robert Mayer's 200th birthday with a value of 90 euro cents. The design comes from the designer Jens Müller from Düsseldorf .

literature

  • Ludwig Pfau: Robert Mayer , in: The gazebo. Illustrirtes Familienblatt 1891, pp. 248–250. With wood engraving of the draft for the monument in Heilbronn, executed with the assistance of Ludwig Pfau by Professor Wilhelm von Rümann, Munich, and the architects Eisenlohr and Weigle in Stuttgart.
  • Robert Mayer Bibliography , edited by Gisela Eisert (= small series of publications from the Heilbronn City Archives; 10). Heilbronn 1978.
  • Helmut Schmolz , Hubert Weckbach : Robert Mayer. His life and work in documents (= publications of the archive of the city of Heilbronn Volume 12), Heilbronn 1964.
  • Eugen Dühring : Robert Mayer. The nineteenth century Galileo. Ernst Schmeitzner Publishing House, Chemnitz 1880 ( digitized version )
  • Hermann Munk:  Mayer, Robert . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1885, pp. 126-128.
  • Walther Gerlach: Julius Robert Mayer . In: Die Chemie (Angewandte Chemie, new episode) . tape 55 , no. 49/50 , 1942, ISSN  1521-3757 , pp. 369-375 .
  • A. Mittasch: The essentials and the absurd to the history of the "catalytic force" . In: Die Chemie (Angewandte Chemie, new episode) . tape 55 , no. 49/50 , 1942, ISSN  1521-3757 , pp. 375-376 .
  • Lore Riegraf: Ancestors list of Julius Robert Mayer . In: Südwestdeutsche Blätter for family history and heraldry . Special issue. Association for family and heraldry in Württemberg and Baden, Stuttgart 1982.
  • Stefan L. Wolff:  Mayer, Julius Robert von. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-428-00197-4 , pp. 546-548 ( digitized version ).
  • Ken Caneva: Robert Mayer and the conservation of energy, Princeton University Press 1993
  • Karl-Eugen Kurrer : Nothing becomes nothing. Nothing becomes nothing. For Robert Mayer's 200th birthday . In: Stahlbau 83rd vol., 2014, no. 12, pp. 915–918.

Fonts

  • Mechanics and heat in collected writings by Robert Mayer , Stuttgart, Cotta, 1867, 2nd edition 1874, 3rd edition 1893, archive, edition 1874
  • Jacob Weyrauch (Ed.): Robert Mayer, Kleinere Schriften und Letters , Stuttgart, Cotta 1893, Archives
  • Robert von Mayer on the conservation of energy. Letters to Wilhelm Griesinger together with his reply from the years 1842-1845 , edited and explained by W. Preyer in Berlin, Verlag von Gebrüder Paetel, Berlin 1889
  • Sadi Carnot, Rudolf Clausius, Robert Mayer: Reflections on the moving power of fire , Ostwald's classic no.37, reprint Verlag Harri Deutsch 2003 (in it by Mayer the two treatises from 1842 and 1845)
  • Notes on the forces of inanimate nature , Annals of Chemistry and Pharmacy (Eds. Friedrich Wöhler, Justus Liebig), Volume 42, 1842, pp. 233-240
    • English translation Remarks on the forces of inorganic nature , Philosophical Magazine, Series 4, Volume 24, 1862, p. 371
  • Organic movement in its connection with the metabolism. A contribution to natural history , Heilbronn, Verlag der Drechslerchen Buchhandlung 1845, digitized
  • Contributions to the dynamics of the sky , Heilbronn, Verlag Johann Ulrich Landherr 1848

Web links

Wikisource: Julius Robert von Mayer  - Sources and full texts
Commons : Julius Robert von Mayer  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The correspondence is published in Mayer's small writings and letters published in Stuttgart in 1893.
  2. ^ Christoph Gradmann: Mayer, Julius Robert. In: Werner E. Gerabek u. a. (Ed.): Encyclopedia of medical history. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 898 f.
  3. ↑ JR Mayer: Comments on the forces of inanimate nature . In: Justus Liebigs Annalen der Chemie, Vol. 42 Issue 2 (1842), pp. 233-240. doi: 10.1002 / jlac.18420420212
  4. ↑ Christine and Holger Friedrich: Unknown facts from the last years of the life of the Sinsheim 1848/49 revolutionary Gustav Mayer (1810-1852) in St. Louis (Missouri) , in: Kraichgau 17, 2002, pp. 257-264.
  5. ^ A Heilbronn monument with an eventful history , Stimme.de. November 25, 2017
  6. ^ Franz von Kobell : Julius Robert v. Mayer (obituary) . In: Meeting reports of the mathematical-physical class of the KB Academy of Sciences in Munich . tape 8 , 1878, p. 112–114 ( online [PDF; accessed March 13, 2017]).
  7. ↑ Court and State Manual of the Kingdom of Württemberg 1877, p. 28.
  8. ^ Honorary members of the Association for Patriotic Natural History in Württemberg
  9. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter M. Académie des sciences, accessed on January 21, 2020 (French).
  10. ↑ http://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.briefmarke-sracht-fuer-aerger-die-robert-mayer-marke-enttaeuscht-die-heilbronner.cdab8867-f6d8-4032-9638-ed8b1ebc1b3f.html
  11. ^ VDI Society for Energy and Environment: Robert Mayer Prize
  12. ↑ IMDb: Robert Mayer - the doctor from Heilbronn (1955)
personal data
SURNAME Mayer, Robert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mayer, Julius Robert von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH November 25, 1814
PLACE OF BIRTH Heilbronn
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1878
Place of death Heilbronn