Karl Friedrich Zöllner

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Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner

Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner (born November 8, 1834 in Berlin , † April 25, 1882 in Leipzig ) was a German physicist , astronomer and spiritualist .

life and work

Zöllner studied physics and natural sciences in Berlin and Basel . From 1862 he worked in Leipzig and habilitated himself in 1865 at the city's university by public defense of his thesis theory of the relative intensities of the phases of the moon . In 1866 he was appointed associate professor and in 1872 full professor of physical astronomy ( astrophysics ).

Zöllner's photometer

Zöllner mainly worked in the field of photometry . For this he also constructed an astrophotometer , the so-called Zöllner photometer. He first described this instrument in his work Basics of a General Photometry of the Sky (Berlin 1861). It is used to measure the light and the color of the heavenly bodies . In addition, he built spectroscopic devices to measure the protuberances of the sun and to localize the spectral lines more precisely . As early as 1860 he described the tax collector deception .

Zöllner opened his teaching post in Leipzig with an inaugural lecture “On the Universal Meaning of Mechanical Principles” (1867). In 1869 he became a member of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences .

Zöllner wrote a work On the Nature of Comets, Contributions to the History and Theory of Knowledge (Leipzig 1872), which not only contains a physical theory of comets , but also conveys a critical-philosophical presentation of the knowledge of nature based on Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer . He tried to establish a uniform law of nature in physics and derived, among other things, general gravity from the basic electrical forces of matter . Furthermore, following Hermann von Helmholtz, he took the view that an expansion from three-dimensional to four-dimensional space was necessary for physics .

In 1877 Zöllner organized a number of spiritualistic séances (especially with Henry Slade ), to which he also invited other important scientists such as Gustav Theodor Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt and on which he published detailed reports in the following years. He hoped that these sessions would provide evidence of the existence of a fourth dimension, and he interpreted apparent telekinetic phenomena during the sessions in this sense. This met with sharp criticism and triggered a heated debate in the last years of his life, in the course of which Zöllner was described by various sides as insane and he himself expressed anti-Semitic views. In 1880, for example, he was one of the initiators of the so - called anti - Semite petition to the German Chancellor . Regardless of this, Leipzig and some of the publishing houses there became, after the Zöllner seances carried out in 1877/1878, at the center of a veritable wave of alcohol that had previously only been well established in the bourgeoisie of the Hanseatic cities. As early as the 19th century, Leipzig became a veritable città occulta and the center of German spiritualism, which established itself much later than in the English-speaking world.

The Zöllner crater was named after him.

Works

  • About photometry . In: Poggendorffs Annalen , 1857.
  • Principles of a general photometry of the sky . Leipzig 1861.
  • Photometric studies . Leipzig 1865.
  • Theory of 4-dimensional space . Leipzig 1867.
  • The nature of comets . Leipzig 1870.
  • About the scientific abuse of vivisection . Leipzig 1880.
  • Scientific treatises . Vol. 1-4. Leipzig 1878–1881.
  • Contributions to the German Jewish question with academic arabesques as documents for a reform of the German universities . Ed. And with an introduction vers. by Moritz Wirth. Mutze, Leipzig 1894. Freimann Collection digitized
  • Fourth dimension and occultism . Selected from the “scientific papers”. and ed. by Rudolf Tischner. Ed. Secret Knowledge, Graz, 2008, ISBN 978-3-902677-45-7 .

literature

  • Dieter B. Herrmann : Karl Friedrich Zöllner , Teubner, Leipzig 1982.
  • Jürgen Hamel: Bibliography of the writings of Karl Friedrich Zöllner . Archenhold Observatory, Berlin-Treptow 1982.
  • Christoph Meinel : Karl Friedrich Zöllner and the scientific culture of the early days : A case study on the genesis of conservative criticism of civilization , ERS-Verlag, Berlin 1991. ( PDF )

Web links

Wikisource: Karl Friedrich Zöllner  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ FOCUS Online: The Zoellner Illusion
  2. ↑ about.com: Zollner Illusion - What Is the Zollner Illusion
  3. ↑ The Truth about Dr. Slade, in The Magician, Will Goldston, Vol. 1 Nov 1905, 139
  4. ^ Corinna Treitel: A Science for the Soul - Occultism and the Genesis of the German Modern , Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London 2004, pp. 3-17
  5. ↑ Treitel, p. 20
  6. ^ Friedrich Zöllner: Contributions to the German Jewish question with academic arabesques as documents for a reform of the German universities. Ed. And with an introduction vers. by Moritz Wirth . Oskar Mutze, Leipzig, 1894. (Freimann collection digitized)
  7. ^ Norbert Kampe: Students and »Jewish question« in the German Empire , ISBN 978-3-525-35738-5 , p. 23, doi : 10.13109 / 9783666357381.23 .
  8. ↑ Uffa Jensen: Educated doppelgangers . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005, ISBN 3-525-35148-8 ( Digitale-sammlungen.de ). , P. 272.
  9. ^ A b Kurt Bayertz, Myriam Gerhard, Walter Jaeschke: Weltanschauung, philosophy and natural science in the 19th century: The Ignorabimus dispute . Meiner Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-7873-2012-7 ( google.com [accessed October 18, 2015]).
personal data
SURNAME Zöllner, Karl Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Zöllner, Johann Karl Friedrich (full name); Zollner, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physicist and astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH April 25, 1882
Place of death Leipzig