Ludwig August Colding

Ludwig August Colding.

Ludwig August Colding (born July 13, 1815 in Arnakke near Holbæk ; †  1888 ) was a Danish physicist and engineer . He is considered to be one of the pioneers of the law of conservation of energy and mechanical heat theory .

Colding was the son of a former naval officer and farmer. At first he was a carpenter and in 1837, on the recommendation of the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted , a friend of the family, entered the Polytechnic School in Copenhagen, where he graduated in 1841. In 1845 he became a road construction inspector and in 1847 an additional inspector of the gas and water works in Copenhagen. In 1858 he became an engineer for the city of Copenhagen . In 1865 Colding became a professor at the Polytechnic School. In 1886 he retired as an engineer.

In 1853 he and the chemist Julius Thomsen showed that cholera spread through drinking water in Copenhagen. Colding has also been involved in large-scale drainage work in the Copenhagen area.

In his spare time, Colding was engaged in science. In 1872 he was the initiator of the establishment of the Danish Meteorological Institute. In the field of physics , Colding is considered a pioneer of mechanical heat theory and postulated the law of conservation of energy independently of Julius Robert von Mayer and James Prescott Joule . At first, his contribution to this was neglected and later he was overshadowed by Mayer and Joule, although Hermann von Helmholtz already paid tribute to Colding (article by Colding in the communications of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences from 1843). Colding was influenced by considerations of natural philosophy, among others from the writings of Ørsted, under whose influence he carried out and published the first experiments (on the compressibility of water) in 1839. In 1852 he published a value for the mechanical heat equivalent that was very close to today's.

From 1856 he was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and in 1875 he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1886 Knight of the Dannebrog Order . In 1871 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh .

Works

Mostly in the reports of the Society of Sciences in Copenhagen.

• The tropical cyclones . Copenhagen (1871)
• The movements of the underground waters . Copenhagen (1872)
• The storms and ravages of the sea in 1872 . Copenhagen (1881)

For energy conservation:

• Theses on Forces (Danish), in the communications of the Danish Academy of Sciences 1843
• On the history of the principle of the conservation of energy , Philosophical Magazine, Vol. 27 1863, pp. 56-64.
• On the universal powers of nature and their mutual dependence , Philosophical Magazine, Vol. 42, 1871, pp. 1-20.

literature

• PF Dahl: Colding and the conservation of energy. Centaurus Vol. 8, 1963, pp. 174-188.
• PF Dahl: Ludwig Colding and the conservation of energy principle. Johnson Reprint, New York 1972.
• Per F. Dahl: Colding, Ludvig August . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 15 , Supplement I: Roger Adams - Ludwik Zejszner and Topical Essays . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1978, p. 84-87 .
• Polytechnical Society 1846-1996. Fransen & Harnow, Copenhagen 1996.
• P. Vinding Colding, Ludvig August. In: Dansk Biografisk Leksikon. Vol. 5, Copenhagen 1934, pp. 377-383.

Web links

• Meyer's Lexicon (1905)