Lothar Meyer
His education and career
Julius Lothar Meyer was born in Varel on August 19th, 1830. His father worked
as a physician in Varel. Lothar was the fourth of seven children, but his
elder brothers and sisters died very early. First he went to a public school
. In 1841 he
attended the secondary school in Varel, which was built on
his father's instigation. As he was nearly 14 years old, he got
seriously ill, so his father forbid him all intellectual
activities. After one year his health improved, so
he could attend a grammar school in Oldenburg. He was one of
the best pupils and liked the old languages. Due to the industrial
revolution he became interested in mathematics and science. In his
youth there were many pioneering events, for example the invention
of photography and the opening of the first German railway line.
On May 8th, 1851 he passed his A- Levels and
decided to become a physician like his father. At the
university of Zürich he started to study medicine and
after two years he went to Würzburg and took his doctor's degree
on February 25th, 1854. Then he wanted to expand his
chemical knowledge, so he went to Heidelberg and did chemical
studies with Bunsen. This was when he became acquainted with
many young chemists, who have become famous later for example
with Kekule and von Bayer. In 1856 Lothar Meyer went to
Königsberg for three terms, to attend Fr. Neumann's
lectures on mathematical physics, which were famous at
that time. In 1858 he took his second doctor's degree with
an article about the influence of carbon monoxide on blood.
On February 21st, 1859 he qualified as a university lecturer
for physics and chemistry with a script about the chemical
doctrines of Bertollet and Berzelius.
His life as a university teacher
From 1859 to 1860 he held lectures at the physiological
institute at Breslau. In August, he married Johanna Volkmann
and had four children with her. On October, 1st he was appointed
to a professorship at the royal school of forestry in Eberswalde.
In spring 1868, he got a professorship at the polytechnic
Karlsruhe.Here he could develop his abilities as a teacher and explorer
to the full for the first time. He improved his work permanently: modern
theories about chemistry. Besides, he did research on the Periodic
Table of the Elements. In 1876 Lothar Meyer accepted a professorship
at the university of Tübingen where he finished his university
career. He tried to find experimental principles for particular
questions connected with the Periodic Table of the Elements.
Investigating atomic weights was one of his main concerns and he
constantly improved the appropriate determination methods. In
1883 the book "The atom weights of elements" was published by
Säbert and Meyer. He received many honours, for example the
"Ehrenkreuz der Württembergischen Krone". For the terms
1894/95 his colleagues elected him as rector magnificus of the
university of Tübingen. On April 11th, 1895 he died unexpectedly
of a stroke at nearly 65 years.
Today we honour Lothar Meyer not only as one of the creators of
the "Periodic Table of the Elements", but also as precursor of
physical chemistry.
This text was translated into English by Hendrik Hoffstedde
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