Famous of Physics of 18 century

Created by abdulkadir Turan

The following 9 pages are in this category, out of 9 total. This list may not reflect recent changes 

David Brewster Abraham Brook František Josef Gerstner Johannes Gessner Johann Baptiste Horvath Pierre Lemonnier Thomas Melvill Pieter Nieuwland Jurij Vega

David BrewsterSir David Brewster (11 December 1781 – 10 February 1868) was a Scottish physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, writer, historian of science and university principal.Most noted for his contributions to the field of optics, he studied the double refraction by compression and discovered thephotoelastic effect, which gave birth to the field of optical mineralogy. For his work, William Whewell dubbed him the "Father of modern experimental optics" and "the Johannes Kepler of Optics.".

He is well-recognized for being the inventor of the kaleidoscope and an improved version of the stereoscope applied to photography. He called it the "lenticular stereoscope", which was the first portable, 3D viewing device. He also invented the binocular camera, two types of polarimeters, the polyzonal lens and the lighthouse illuminator.

A prominent figure in the popularization of science, he is considered one of the founders of the British Association, of which he would be elected President in 1849. In addition, he was the editor of the 18-volume Edinburgh Encyclopedia

Though Brewster duly finished his theological studies and was licensed to preach, his other interests distracted him from the duties of his profession. In 1799 fellow-student Henry Brougham persuaded him to study the diffraction of light. The results of his investigations were communicated from time to time in papers to the Philosophical Transactions of London and other scientific journals. The fact that other scientists – notably Étienne-Louis Malus and Augustin Fresnel – were pursuing the same investigations contemporaneously in France does not invalidate Brewster's claim to independent discovery, even though in one or two cases the priority must be assigned to others.

The most important subjects of his inquiries can be enumerated under the following five headings:

1 The laws of light polarisation by reflection and refraction, and other quantitative laws of phenomena;

2 The discovery of the polarising structure induced by heat and pressure;

3 The discovery of crystals with two axes of double refraction, and many of the laws of their phenomena, including the connection between optical structure and crystalline forms;

4 The laws of metallic reflection; 5 Experiments on the absorption of light.

In this line of investigation, the prime importance belongs to the discovery of

1 the connection between the refractive index and the polarising angle;

2 biaxial crystals, and 3 the production of double refraction

by irregular heating.

Among the non-scientific public, his fame spread more effectually by his invention in about 1815 of the kaleidoscope, for which there was a great demand in both the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. As a reflection of this fame, Brewster portrait was later printed in some cigar boxes. Brewster chose renowned achromatic lens developer Philip Carpenter as the sole manufacturer of the kaleidoscope in 1817. Although Brewster patented the kaleidoscope in 1817 (GB 4136), a copy of the prototype was shown to London opticians and copied before the patent was granted. As a consequence, the kaleidoscope became produced in large numbers, but yielded no direct financial benefits to Brewster. It proved to be a massive success with two hundred thousand kaleidoscopes sold in London and Paris in just three months

Abraham Brook

Abraham Brook (fl. 1789) was an English a bookseller

in Norwich, now remembered as an experimental physicist,

working with electrometers and vacuum flasks.

He published at Norwich in 1789 a quarto volume of Miscellaneous Experiments and Remarks on Electricity, the Air Pump, and the Barometer, with a description of an Electrometer of a new construction. The work was translated into German and published at Leipzig in 1790. A paper by him, Of a new Electrometer, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions(abridg. xv. 308), 1782. Acknowledgement of Brook's practical ability is in the same volume (p. 702) in an article by William : 'I cannot conclude this paper,' he says, 'without acknowledging my obligations to the ingenious Mr. Brook of Norwich, who, by communicating to me his method of boiling mercury, has been the chief cause of my success in these experiments.'

František Josef Gerstner

František Josef Gerstner (German: Franz Josef von Gerstner, Czech: František Josef Gerstner; February 23, 1756 – July 25, 1832) was a Bohemian physicist and engineer.Gerstner was born in Chomutov, where he studied at the Jesuits gymnasium, after which he studied mathematics and astronomy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Prague between 1772 and 1777. In 1781, he started to study medicine in Vienna, but quickly decided to work in the astronomical observatory instead. In 1789, he became professor of mathematics there.

In 1795, Gerstner became a member of the government commission which tried to improve higher technical education in the Austrian empire. Following his suggestion, the old Prague engineering school Česká stavovská inženýrská škola was converted to a polytechnic school in 1803. Gerstner became director of the polytechnic in 1806 and also professor of mechanics and hydraulics. He taught there until 1823, when he was forced to stop due to an illness. The polytechnic still exists today as the Czech Technical University in Prague (ČVUT), and the institute for artificial intelligence and cybernetics research at ČVUT bears the name Gerstner Laboratory.He died, aged 76, in Mladějov.

From his published works, the most important ones were Theory of waves (1804) and Handbuch der Mechanik (1831; Handbook of mechanics). This last book appeared in three volumes, with 1400 subscribers.

His work focused on applied mechanics, hydrodynamics and river transportation. He helped to build the first iron works and first steam engine in Czech lands. In 1807, he suggested the construction of a horse-drawn railway between České Budějovice and Linz. This railway was later actually built between 1827 and 1829 by his son František Antonín Gerstner (German: Franz Anton (Ritter) von Gerstner, 1796, Prague - 1840, Philadelphia.

Johannes Gessner

Johannes Gessner (18 March 1709 – 6 May 1790) was a Swiss mathematician, physicist, botanicus, mineralogist and physician. He is seen as the founder of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Zürich".Gessner was born and died in Zürich, where he trained in Zürich with Johannes von Muralt. He moved to Basel to study medicine, continuing his studies in 1726 and 1727 at the University of Leiden

. There he became a friend of Albrecht von Haller. With Haller he made a grand tour to Paris to finish their medicine studies. That is where he wrote his diary that was later published as Pariser Tagebuch. The two friends in 1728 studied mathematics under Johann Bernoulli and travelled through Switzerland.

With Haller he made a grand tour to Paris to finish their medicine studies. That is where he wrote his diary that was later published as Pariser Tagebuch. The two friends in 1728 studied mathematics under Johann Bernoulli and travelled through Switzerland.

Gessner became a doctor in Bazel in 1730, but he quickly chose a scientific career. In 1733 he became math professor and in 1738 he began to teach physics in Zürich. Gessner influenced many Swiss students, such as Johann Heinrich Rahn and Johann Georg Sulzer.

Gessner was a follower of Carolus Linnaeus and published over Swiss flora.

Works Scientific: Phytographia sacra, 1759–69 Tabulae phytographicae, 1795–1804 Literary: Pariser Tagebuch, 1727

Johann Baptiste Horvath

Johann Baptiste Horvath (Hungarian: Keresztély János Horváth, 13 July 1732 in Kőszeg – 20 October 1799 in Buda) was a Hungarian-born Jesuit Professor ofPhysics and Philosophy at the University of Trnava (Nagyszombat) in modern-day Slovakia, which was then part of the Kingdom of Hungary. Also known asKeresztély János Horváth, he is most noted for his authorship of various textbooks.

Horvath entered the Jesuit order at 19 years of age (17 October 1751 in Trenčín), became a university professor, and subsequently authored the well-known Latin textbooks Physica Generalis (1767/1782, 496pp) and Physica Particularis (1770/1782, 472pp).Various other works are attributed to Horvath, including Elementa Physicae (1790/1807/1819, 656pp) which is a condensed revision ofPhysica Generalis and Physica Particularis, Institutiones Logicae (1767/1813, 118pp), Elementa/Institutiones Matheseos (1772/1782, 456pp), Institutiones Metaphysicae (1767/1817, 362pp) and Declaratio Infirmitatis Fundamentorum (1797, 188pp) which is a philosophical text regarding speculations on the nature of God posited by Immanuel

Kant.This collection of works, includingmetaphysics/logic and physics, was typical of Jesuit academics teaching under the Ratio Studiorum (1599). The books were published in Trnava (Slovakia), Augsburg (Germany), Eger and Buda (Hungary), Velencze (Romania), Madrid (Spain), Vienna (Austria) and Venice and Turin (Italy), including multiple editions and/or printings of each volume.

Physica Generalis deals primarily with classical mechanics and celestial mechanics, for example including a Copernican (heliocentric) diagram of the solar system, missing Uranus and Neptune, and a diagram of a highly-elliptical comet. Physica Particularis includes treatments of fluid mechanics, heat transfer and optics, and several chapters deal scientifically with the nascent field of electricity, where Horvath is thought to be the first East European author to present electricity and magnetism in the same chapter

The coverage is eclectic, including topics like the aurora borealis, combustion, sound, rainbows, botany and lightning. The work is also notable for its reliance on experimental physics, since this branch of physics was still emerging as a reputable field, especially among Jesuit academics. 

For example, Horvath cites experiments on electricity by Benjamin Franklin (1754). In addition to his physics textbooks, Horvath published the mathematics textbook Institutiones Matheseos, including sections covering arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and conic sections.

He was among the most important Eastern European physics textbook authors in the 18th century (see also Andreas Jaszlinszky as well as Leopold Biwald and Joseph Redlhamer), and an innovative proponent of Newtonian mechanics, which in hindsight was the correct theory rather than the Cartesian mechanics popular among someContinental philosophers.

 By promoting the methods of Copernicus and Newton, influenced by the approach of Borgondio and Boscovich, Horvath represents a (correct) departure from "accepted" thinking in that region of Europe, and his works were widely distributed. He continued to publish and instruct students from a secular professorship after the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1773, and during his tenure the university faculty moved to modern-day Hungary (1777) to become the renowned University of Budapest.

They are what he wrote

Pierre Lemonnier

Cartesian planetary vortices, Physica Particularis, 

Pierre Lemonnier (Saint-Sever, 28 June 1675 – Saint-Germain-en-Laye, 27 November 1757) was a French astronomer, a Professor of Physics andPhilosophy at the Collège d'Harcourt (University of Paris), and a member of the French Academy of Sciences.

Lemonnier published the 6-volume Latin university textbook Cursus philosophicus ad scholarum usum accommodatus (Paris, 1750/1754) which consisted of the following volumes (generally consistent with the Ratio Studiorum):

Volume 1 - Logica Volume 2 - Metaphysica

Volume 3 - Physica Generalis including mechanics and geometry

Volume 4 - Physica Particularis (Part I) including astronomy (Ptolemaic, Copernican, Tychonic), optics, chemistry, gravity, and Newtonian versusCartesian dynamics

Volume 5 - Physica Particularis (Part II) including fluid mechanics, human anatomy, magnetism, and miscellaneous subjects (earthquakes, electricity,botany, metallurgy, etc. ...)

Volume 6 - Moralis including appendices on trigonometry and sundials

He was also the father of Pierre Charles Le Monnier and Louis Guillaume Le Monnier.

Thomas Melvill

Thomas Melvill(e) (1726 – December 1753) was a Scottish natural philosopher, who was active in the fields of spectroscopy and astronomy.

The son of Helen Whytt and the Rev Andrew Melville, minister of Monimail (d. 29 July 1736), Thomas was a student at Glasgow University. In 1749, with Alexander Wilson, his landlord and later the first professor of astronomy at Glasgow University, made the first recorded use of kites in meteorology. They measured air temperature at various levels above the ground simultaneously with a train of kites.

He most notably delivered a lecture entitled Observations on light and colours to the Medical Society of Edinburgh in 1752, in which he described what has been seen as the first flame test. In it he described how he had used a prism to observe a flame coloured by various salts. He reported that a yellow line was always seen at the same place in the spectrum; this was derived from the sodium which was present as an impurity in all his salts.

Because of this, he is sometimes described as the father of flame emission spectroscopy, though he did not identify the source of the line, or propose his experiment as a method of analysis. He also proposed that light rays of different colours travelled at different speeds to explain the action of a prism, and suggested that this could be verified if the moons of Jupiter appeared as slightly different colours at different stages of their orbit. An experiment by James Short failed to confirm his hypothesis. Melvill died in Geneva in 1753, aged 27.

Pieter Nieuwland

Pieter Nieuwland (5 November 1764, Diemermeer – 14 November 1794, Leiden) was a Dutch nautical scientist, chemist, mathematician, and poet. During his life he was known as a child prodigy and has been called the Dutch Isaac Newton

Early life and studies

Nieuwland was born as the son of the carpenter Barend Nieuwland (already 56 years old at the time) and his wife Marretje Klinkert. Even at a young age he had a great curiosity and a strong memory. His father began teaching him mathematics, but the young Pieter soon outpaced his father, and the mathematician Henricus Aeneae continued his education.

Nieuwland wrote poems at the age of seven, and his genius attracted the attention of the wealthy brothers De Bosch, who had a country house in the Watergraafsmeer. They set themselves up as patrons for the boy, financed his studies at the Athenaeum Illustre of Amsterdam, and Jeronimo de Bosch personally taught him Latin

. At the athenaeum he followed the teaching of the Literature Professor Herman Tollius, translated several Greek and Latin works into Dutch, and wrote and defended a thesis on the Stoic philosopher Gaius Musonius Rufus. Following his education at the atheneum he studied at Leiden University.

Academic career

In 1788 Nieuwland published his first bundle of poetry. In 1789, he became lector in mathematics, astronomy, and nautical sciences at the University of Amsterdam. At the end of 1790, he helped found the Gezelschap der Hollandsche Scheikundigen ("Society of Dutch Chemists"), a group that lasted only ten years but provided early support forAntoine Laurent Lavoisier's work in chemistry. The other founders included Nicolaas Bondt, merchant Adriaan Paets van Troostwijk and physician Jan Rudolph Deiman.

On July 24, 1791, Nieuwland married Anna Hartigina Pruijssenaar (born 27 July 1770). Anna died only 9 months later in child birth, on 29 March 1792, while their newborn daughter died two days later. This sad event inspired Nieuwland to write one of his better known poems, Ter Gedachtenisse van mijne Echtgenoote ("In memory of my wife")..

To soften the blow, the University of Amsterdam gave him leave to go on a sabbatical to Germany that summer. Among others he visited Franz Xaver von Zach, with whom he did some surveying studies around Gotha in September

On Jun 1, 1793, Nieuwland was appointed as a professor in mathematics, physics and astronomy at Leiden University.That year he also published a book on nautical sciences. Before or around this time, Nieuwland had found the largest cube that can pass through a hole in a unit cube, a problem that had been posed 100 years earlier byPrince Rupert of the Rhine and given an inferior solution by English mathematician John Wallis. Nieuwland's solution was found among his papers after he died, and published in 1816 by his mentor Jan Hendrik van Swinden.

After five days of sudden severe illness,Nieuwland died on November 14, 1794. He was buried in Diemen on the 24th, on which occasion van Swinden delivered a lengthy eulogy.

Jurij Vega

Baron Jurij Bartolomej Vega (also correct Veha; official Latin: Georgius Bartholomaei Vecha; German: Georg Freiherr von Vega) (born Vehovec, March 23, 1754 – September 26, 1802) was a Slovene mathematician, physicist and artillery officer.

Early life

Born to a farmer's family  in the small village of Zagorica east of Ljubljana in Slovenia, Vega was 6 years old when his father Jernej Veha died. Vega was educated first in Moravče and later attended high school for six years (1767–1773) in Ljubljana, studying Latin, Greek, religion, German, history,geography, science, and mathematics. At that time there were about 500 students there

. He was a schoolfellow of Anton Tomaž Linhart, a Slovenian writer and historian. Vega completed high school when he was 19, in 1773. After completing Lyceum in Ljubljana he became a navigational engineer.Tentamen philosophicum, a list of questions for his comprehensive examination, was preserved and is available in the Mathematical Library in Ljubljana. The problems cover logic, algebra, metaphysics, geometry, trigonometry, geodesy, stereometry, geometry of curves, ballistics, and general and special physics.

Vega left Ljubljana five years after graduation and entered military service in 1780 as a professor of mathematics at the Artillery School in Vienna. At that time he started to sign his last name as Vega and no longer Veha. When Vega was 33 he married Josefa Svoboda (Jožefa Swoboda) (1771–1800), a Czech noble from České Budějovice who was 16 at that time.

Vega participated in several wars. In 1788 he served under Austrian Imperial Field-Marshal Ernst Gideon von Laudon (1717–1790) in a campaign against the Turks at Belgrade. His command of several mortar batteries contributed considerably to the fall of the Belgrade fortress. Between 1793 and 1797 he fought French Revolutionaries under the command of Austrian General Dagobert-Sigismond de Wurmser (1724–1797) with the European coalition on the Austrian side.

In September 1802 Vega was reported missing. After a few days' search his body was found. The police report concluded that it was an accident. However, the true cause of his death remains a mystery, but it is believed that he died on 26 September 1802 in Nußdorf on the Danube, near the Austrian capital, Vienna.

There is a well-backed theory about his death: he loved horses, and apparently he found out a miller owned a magnificent one. When he went to the miller to negotiate about the price, the miller, upon seeing his Lord and military insignia, took interest in the money he was carrying with him, murdered him; one of Vega's tools (compass) was found in the mill one year after his disappearance and it had "J V" initials on it.

Farm where Vega was bornPlaque on house

Jurij Vega's birth place

He fought at Fort Louis, Mannheim, Mainz,Wiesbaden, Kehl, and Dietz. In 1795 he had two 30-pound (14 kilogram) mortars cast, with conically drilled bases and a greater charge, for a firing range up to 3000 metres (3300 yards). The old 60 lb (27 kg) mortars had a range of only 1800 m (2000 yd).

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