Martin Heinrich Klaproth
Martin Heinrich Klaproth (born December 1, 1743 in Wernigerode , † January 1, 1817 in Berlin ) was a German chemist .
Klaproth discovered the elements uranium , zirconium , and cerium ; he was able to verify the discovery of the elements titanium , tellurium (first representation) and strontium (parallel to Hope ). As one of the most respected chemists of his time, he influenced chemical thinking in Germany. He supported the turning away from the phlogiston theory and the acceptance of the oxidation theory of Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier after appropriate attempts (1792).
Alongside Joseph Louis Proust , Klaproth was the analyst in the time before Jöns Jacob Berzelius . Klaproth introduced the balance as a standard analytical instrument. Coupled with the precise execution of the experiment, a creative approach to the separation walks and precise details of the test results, he made a special contribution to the analytical procedures. In gravimetry , he introduced the rule of drying to constant weight .
Life
Martin Heinrich Klaproth was born in Wernigerode as the child of a poor tailor. After attending the city school in Wernigerode, Klaproth worked for six years in the Ratsapotheke in Quedlinburg . Between 1766 and 1771 he was an assistant in various pharmacies in Hanover (Hofapotheke), Berlin (Mohrenapotheke) and Danzig (Ratsapotheke). During his stay in Berlin, he received further training from chemists Johann Heinrich Pott and Andreas Sigismund Marggraf .
In 1771 he returned from Danzig to Berlin and worked in the pharmacy Zum Weißen Schwan owned by Valentin Rose the Elder , with whom he became friends. When Rose died a short time later, Klaproth continued to run the pharmacy and took on the upbringing of his employer's four children, including Valentin Rose the Younger . He set up a laboratory to carry out experimental investigations . From 1771 to the end of March 1772, Wernhard Huber worked as an assistant under Klaproth.
After his marriage to the wealthy Christiane Sophie Lehmann , a niece of the chemist Andreas Sigismund Marggraf , he acquired the Bear Pharmacy in Berlin in 1780, which enjoyed a good reputation until he left in 1800.
Then Klaproth worked as a proper chemist at the Academy of Sciences and as the successor to Franz Carl Achard . From 1787 onwards he worked as a professor of chemistry at the Berlin Artillery School, as a lecturer at the Collegium medico-chirurgicum and as a teacher at the Berg- und Hütteninstitut. At the beginning of the 1790s, Klaproth undertook experiments together with Alexander von Humboldt .
In the years from 1795 to 1815 he published six volumes of his "Contributions to the chemical knowledge of mineral bodies"; the minerals analysis was his special preference. Klaproth was also interested in determining the silver, copper and zinc content of metals, coins and analyzing glass. He also developed a digestion process for silicates (evaporation with potassium hydroxide, melting in a silver crucible). He found phosphates in urine, clarified the composition of alum and apatite , analyzed red copper ore , yellow lead ore , aragonite , lepidolite , dolomite , emerald , topaz , garnet and titanite .
He was the first to describe a number of as yet unknown or incorrectly classified compounds and carried out new precise qualitative and quantitative analyzes. He gave precise descriptions of the experiments, which also contained information on possible sources of error, which was not yet common at the time. At the same time he put together an immense mineral collection, which at the end of his life comprised 4,828 pieces and was bought by Berlin University after his death and is now in the Berlin Museum of Natural History .
In 1810, at the suggestion of Alexander von Humboldt, he was appointed professor of chemistry at the newly founded Berlin University . Jöns Jacob Berzelius was proposed as the successor to the chair of chemistry, but he declined the offer and proposed the young Eilhard Mitscherlich instead . Since 1805 he was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg . In 1815 he was elected a foreign member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .
In 1776 Klaproth became a Freemason and was accepted into the Berlin Freemason Lodge "Zur Eintracht" . He held the office of "National Grand Master" in the Prussian Grand Lodge "To the Three Worlds " . In the 1780s, the Lodge was under the strong influence of Rosicrucians , who believed in the transmutation of metals and prescribed alchemical experiments for the achievement of higher degrees. When Klaproth was asked for advice on attaining the ninth degree in one such attempt in 1787, he warned Prince Friedrich von Braunschweig that there was a risk that the laboratory he was housed would blow up, whereupon he ended his practical alchemical orientation and demolished his laboratory.
Klaproth died of a stroke on New Year's Day 1817 . He was buried in the Dorotheenstadt cemetery . The burial site is in the CAL department, G2.
Klaproth's son Julius Klaproth worked against his father's will as an orientalist and explorer. His daughter Johanna Wilhelmine was married to the mountain ridge Heinrich Carl Wilhelm Abich . The mineralogist, geologist and explorer Hermann von Abich was his grandson.
The Klaproth lunar crater is named after him.
Services
- Discovery of several chemical elements
- Resourceful analyst
- Co-editor of various trade journals
- Discovery of mellitic acid (benzene hexacarboxylic acid)
- First description of the mineral natrolite
- Phosphorus as the cause of the cold brittleness of iron (together with Meyer)
- Calcite and aragonite have the same composition ( dimorphism )
- Barium nitrate as a disintegrating agent in the analysis of silicates
- Development of paper recycling
Fonts
- Chemical investigation of the mineral springs at Carlsbad . Berlin 1790 ( digitized version of the University Library Kiel )
- Contributions to the chemical knowledge of mineral bodies , (6 volumes), Berlin 1795–1815. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf , volumes 1 ; 2 ; 3 ; 4 ; 5
- Chemical treatises of mixed content . Nicolai, Berlin [a. a.] 1815 Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
- Chemical dictionary , together with Wolff, (5 volumes), 1807–1810 ( digitized version )
- New edition of the Handbuch der Chemie by Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren
Lecture notes
- Lectures on experimental chemistry: based on a copy from 1789 , edited and edited by Rüdiger Stolz, Berlin-Charlottenburg: Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Religionsgeschichte Engel 1993, ISBN 978-3-929134-02-5
- Chemistry: based on a copy by Stephan Friedrich Barez, winter 1807/08 , edited and edited by Brita Engel, Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte Engel 1994, ISBN 978-3-929134-03-2 .
- Chemistry: based on the copy by Arthur Schopenhauer together with his marginal notes, winter 1811/12 , edited and edited by Brita Engel, Berlin: Verlag für Wissenschafts- und Regionalgeschichte Engel 1993, ISBN 978-3-929134-04-9 .
literature
- Günther Bugge: The book of great chemists , Volume I, Verlag Chemie 1974, p. 334, ISBN 3-527-25021-2
- Georg Edmund Then: Klaproth, Martin Heinrich. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , pp. 707-709 ( digitized version ).
- Albert Ladenburg: Klaproth, Martin Heinrich . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, p. 60 f.
- Eugen Lennhoff, Oskar Posner, Dieter A. Binder: International Freemasons Lexicon . 5th edition. Herbig Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-7766-2478-6 .
- From phlogistics to modern chemistry: Lectures at the symposium on the occasion of the 250th birthday of Martin Heinrich Klaproth , ed. by Michael Engel. Publication for scientific and regional history, Berlin 1995, ISBN 978-3-929134-07-0 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Martin Heinrich Klaproth in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Martin Heinrich Klaproth in the German Digital Library
- Search for "Martin Heinrich Klaproth" in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hans-Werner Schütt : Martin Heinrich Klapproth as an archaeometer. In: Chemistry in Our Time . 23rd year (1989), No. 2, p. 50 ff.
- ↑ Bären-Apotheke Berlin ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Hagen-Wolfgang Hein (Ed.): Alexander von Humboldt. Life and work . Boehringer, Ingelheim 1985, ISBN 3-921037-55-7 , pp. 157 .
- ^ A b Günther Bugge: The book of the great chemists. Verlag Chemie , 1974, p. 334 ff.
- ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Klaproth, Martin Heinrich. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed January 5, 2020 (Russian).
- ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 132.
- ↑ Claus Priesner : History of Alchemy. Beck 2011, p. 86f, based on the history of alchemy by Hermann Kopp
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Klaproth, Martin Heinrich |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German chemist |
DATE OF BIRTH | December 1, 1743 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Wernigerode |
DATE OF DEATH | January 1, 1817 |
Place of death | Berlin |