Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
scientistA scientist, in the broadest sense, is any person who engages in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge or an individual that engages in such practices and traditions that are linked to schools of thought or philosophy. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the...
, satirist and Anglophile. As a scientist, he was the first to hold a professorship explicitly dedicated to
experimental physicsWithin the field of physics, experimental physics is the category of disciplines and sub-disciplines concerned with the observation of physical phenomena in order to gather data about the universe...
in Germany. Today, he is remembered for his posthumous notebooks, which he himself called
Sudelbücher, a description modeled on the
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
bookkeepingBookkeeping is the recording of financial transactions. Transactions include sales, purchases, income, and payments by an individual or organization. Bookkeeping is usually performed by a bookkeeper. Bookkeeping should not be confused with accounting. The accounting process is usually performed by...
term "waste books", and for his discovery of the strange treelike patterns now called
Lichtenberg figureLichtenberg figures are branching electric discharges that sometimes appear on the surface or the interior of insulating materials. They are named after the German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who originally discovered and studied them...
s.
Life
Lichtenberg was the youngest of seventeen children of
pastorThe term pastor usually refers to an ordained person within a Christian church. In some countries the term is more usually used in traditional Protestant churches but is also used in reference to priests and bishops within the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches. The...
Johann Conrad Lichtenberg. His father, ascending through the ranks of the church hierarchy, eventually became superintendent for
DarmstadtDarmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The city of Darmstadt was founded by the Counts of Katzenelnbogen in 1330, though settlement in the area is known to have been present as early as the late 11th century...
. Unusually for a priest in those times, he seems to have possessed a fair amount of scientific knowledge. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was educated at his parents' house until ten years of age, when he joined the
LateinschuleLatin school was the grammar school of fourteenth to sixteenth century Europe, though the latter term was much more common in England. Emphasis was placed, as the name indicates, on learning to use Latin. The education given at Latin schools gave great emphasis to the complicated grammar of the...
in Darmstadt. His intelligence and wit became obvious at a very early age. He wanted to study mathematics, but his family could not afford to pay for lessons. In 1762 his mother applied to
Ludwig VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-DarmstadtLouis VIII was the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt from 1739 - 1768. He was the son of Ernest Louis, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt and Margravine Dorothea Charlotte of Brandenburg-Ansbach....
, who granted sufficient funds. In 1763, Lichtenberg entered Göttingen University, where in 1769 he became extraordinary professor of
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
, and six years later ordinary professor. He held this post till his death.
Lichtenberg became a
hunchbackKyphosis also called "hunchback", in a general term, is a common condition of a curvature of the upper spine...
owing to a malformation of the
spineIn human anatomy, the vertebral column is a column usually consisting of 33 vertebrae, the sacrum, intervertebral discs, and the coccyx situated in the dorsal aspect of the torso, separated by spinal discs...
. This left him unusually short, even by eighteenth-century standards. Over time this malformation grew worse, ultimately affecting even his breathing.
One of the first scientists to introduce
experimentIn scientific research, an experiment is a method of investigating causal relationships among variables, or to test a hypothesis. An experiment is a cornerstone of the empirical approach to acquiring data about the world and is used in both natural sciences and social sciences...
s with apparatus in their lectures, Lichtenberg was a most popular and respected figure in the European intellectual circles of his time. He maintained good relations with most of the great figures of that era, including Goethe and
KantKANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
. In 1784
Alessandro VoltaCount Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist known especially for the development of the first electric cell in 1800.-Early life and works:...
visited Göttingen especially to see the man and his experiments. The eminent mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss was one of the hearers of his lectures. In 1793 he was elected a member of the
Royal SocietyThe Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, or even the Royal, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is considered by most to be the oldest such society still in existence...
.
As a physicist, today he is remembered for his investigations in
electricityElectricity is a general term that encompasses a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge...
, for discovering branching discharge patterns on dielectrics now called Lichtenberg figures. In 1777, he built a large
electrophorusAn electrophorus is a capacitive generator used to produce electrostatic charge via the process of electrostatic induction. A first version of it was invented in 1762 by Swedish professor Johan Carl Wilcke,...
in order to generate
static electricityStatic electricity refers to the buildup of electric charge on the surface of objects. The static charges remain on an object until they either bleed off to ground or are quickly neutralized by a discharge...
through
inductionElectrostatic induction is a redistribution of electrical charge in an object, caused by the influence of nearby charges. Induction was discovered by British scientist John Canton in 1753 and Swedish professor Johan Carl Wilcke in 1762. Electrostatic generators, such as the Wimshurst machine, the...
. One of the largest ever made, it was 6 feet (2 m) in diameter and could produce 15 inch (38 cm) sparks. With it, he discovered the basic principle of modern
XerographyXerography is a dry photocopying technique invented by Chester Carlson in 1938, for which he was awarded on October 6, 1942. Carlson originally called his invention electrophotography...
copy machine
technologyTechnology is a broad concept that deals with human as well as other animal species' usage and knowledge of tools and crafts, and how it affects a species' ability to control and adapt to its environment...
. This discovery was also the forerunner of modern day Plasma Physics. By discharging a high
voltageVoltage is commonly used as a short name for electrical potential difference. Its corresponding SI unit is the volt...
point near an
insulatorAn insulator, also called a dielectric, is a material that resists the flow of electric current. An insulating material has atoms with tightly bonded valence electrons. These materials are used in parts of electrical equipment, also called insulators or insulation, intended to support or separate...
, he was able to record strange tree-like patterns in fixed dust. These
Lichtenberg figureLichtenberg figures are branching electric discharges that sometimes appear on the surface or the interior of insulating materials. They are named after the German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, who originally discovered and studied them...
s are considered today to be examples of fractals.
He was one of the first to introduce
Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat...
's lightning rod to Germany by installing such devices to his house in Göttingen and his garden sheds. He also proposed the standardized paper size system used all over the world today (except in the
USThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
), known as
ISO 216ISO 216 specifies international standard paper sizes used in most countries in the world today. It is the standard which defines the commonly available A4 paper size...
, which has A4 as the most commonly used size.
Invited by his students, he visited
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
twice, from Easter to early summer 1770 and from August 1774 to Christmas 1775, where he was received cordially by
George IIIGeorge III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
and Queen Charlotte. He led the King through the royal observatory in Richmond, upon which the king proposed that he become professor of philosophy. He also met with participants of Cook's voyages. Great Britain impressed him, and he became a well-known Anglophile after the visits.
He had many romances. Most of the women were from poor families. In 1777 he met Maria Stechard, then aged 13, who lived with the professor permanently after 1780. She died in 1782. In the following year he met the Margarethe Kellner (1768–1848). He married her in 1789, in order to give her a
pensionIn general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. It is a tax deferred savings vehicle that allows for the tax-free accumulation of a fund for later use as a retirement income...
, as he thought he was to die soon. She gave him six children, and outlived him by 49 years.
Lichtenberg was prone to
procrastinationProcrastination is the deferment of actions or tasks to a later time. Psychologists often cite this human behavior as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision....
. He failed to launch the first ever
hydrogen balloonA gas balloon is any balloon that stays aloft due to being filled with a gas less dense than air or lighter than air . A gas balloon may also be called a Charlière for its inventor, the Frenchman Jacques Charles. Today, familiar gas balloons include large blimps and small rubber party balloons...
, and although he always dreamed of writing a novel à la
FieldingHenry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....
's
Tom JonesThe History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, often known simply as Tom Jones, is a comic novel by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. First published on 28 February 1749, Tom Jones is among the earliest English prose works describable as a novel...
, he never finished more than a few pages. He died at the age of 56, after a short illness.
Waste books
The "waste books" (
Sudelbücher in
GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
) are the notebooks he kept from his student days until the end of his life. Each volume was accorded a letter of the alphabet from A, which begun in 1765, to L, which broke off at Lichtenberg's death in 1799.
These notebooks first became known to the world after the man's death, when the first and second editions of
Lichtenbergs Vermischte Schriften (1800-06 and 1844-53) were published by his sons and brothers. Since the initial publications, however, notebooks G and H, and most of notebook K, were destroyed or disappeared. Those missing parts are believed to contain sensitive materials. The manuscripts of the remaining notebooks are now preserved in Göttingen University.
The notebooks contain quotations that struck Lichtenberg, titles of books to read, autobiographical sketches, and short or long reflections. It is those reflections that help Lichtenberg earn his posthumous fame. Today he is regarded as one of the best aphorists in the Western intellectual history.
Some scholars have attempted to distil a system of thought out of Lichtenberg's scattered musings. However, Lichtenberg was not a professional philosopher, and had no need to present, or to have, any consistent philosophy.
The waste books nevertheless reveal a critical and analytical way of thinking and emphasize on experimental evidence in physics, through which he became one of the early founders and advocates of modern scientific methodology.
The more experience and experiments are accumulated during the exploration of nature, the more faltering its theories become. It is always good though not to abandon them instantly. For every hypothesis which used to be good at least serves the purpose of duly summarizing and keeping all phenomena until its own time. One should lay down the conflicting experience separately, until it has accumulated sufficiently to justify the efforts necessary to edifice a new theory. (Lichtenberg: waste book JII/1602)
The reflections also include keen observations on human nature, à la the 17th-century French moralists.
SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity...
admired Lichtenberg for what he had written in his notebooks greatly. He called Lichtenberg one of those who "think ... for their own instruction", who are "genuine
thinkers for themselves in both senses of the words". Other admirers of Lichtenberg's notebooks include
NietzscheFriedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th- century German philosopher and classical philologist. He wrote critical texts on religion, morality, contemporary culture, philosophy and science, using a distinctive German-language style and displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and...
,
FreudSigmund Freud , Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology...
and
WittgensteinLudwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language....
. Lichtenberg is not read by many outside Germany.
Leo TolstoyLeo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
held Lichtenberg's writings in high esteem, expressing his perplexity of "why the Germans of the present day neglect this writer so much." The Chinese scholar and wit
Qian ZhongshuQian Zhongshu was a Chinese literary scholar and writer, known for his burning wit and formidable erudition.To the general public, he is best known for his satiric novel Fortress Besieged...
quotes the
Waste books in his works several times. A crater on the
MoonThe Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is , about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The common centre of mass of the system is located at about —a quarter the Earth's...
is named
LichtenbergLichtenberg is an isolated lunar crater located in the western part of the Oceanus Procellarum. The nearest crater of note is Briggs to the south....
in his honour.
Other works
As a satirist, Lichtenberg takes high rank among the German writers of the 18th century. His biting wit involved him in many controversies with well-known contemporaries, such as the
SwissSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
physiognomist
Johann Kaspar LavaterJohann Kaspar Lavater was a Swiss poet and physiognomist.-Biography:Lavater was born at Zürich, and educated at the Gymnasium there, where J. J. Bodmer and J. J. Breitinger were among his teachers...
whose science of
physiognomyPhysiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...
he ridiculed, and Johann Heinrich Voss, whose views on
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
pronunciation called forth a powerful satire,
Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes.
In 1777, Lichtenberg opposed the apparent misrepresentation of science by
Jacob PhiladelphiaJacob Philadelphia was a Jewish magician, physicist, mechanic, juggler, astrologer, alchemist, and Kabbalist.-Biography:He is believed to have been born on August 14, 1735 and given the name Jacob Meyer....
. Lichtenberg considered him to be a magician, not a physicist, and created a satirical poster that was intended to prevent Philadelphia from performing his exhibition in Göttingen. The placard, called "
Lichtenberg's AvertissementLichtenberg's Avertissement, written by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, is a poster intended to deter the citizens of Göttingen, Germany, from attending the performance of Jacob Philadelphia in 1777. The performance was supposed to be an exhibition of scientific experiments. However, Lichtenberg...
", described extravagant and miraculous tricks that were to be performed. As a result, Philadelphia left the city without a performance.
In 1784 he took over the publication of the textbook
Anfangsgründe der Naturlehre ("Foundations of the Natural Sciences") from his friend and colleague Johann Christian Erxleben upon his premature death in 1777. Until 1794, three further editions had followed. For many years, the
Anfangsgründe remained the standard textbook for physics in German.
He contributed to the
Göttinger Taschen Calender from 1778 onwards, and to the
Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Literatur, which he edited for three years (1780–1782) with
J. G. A. ForsterJohann Georg Adam Forster was a German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist, and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father on several scientific expeditions, including James Cook's second voyage to the Pacific...
. The
Göttinger Taschen Calendar, beside being a usual Calendar for everyday usage, contained not only short writings on natural phenomena and new scientific discoveries (which would be termed popular science today), but also essays in which he contests quackery and superstition. In the spirit of enlightenment, he strives to educate the common people to use logic, wit and the power of their own senses.
Based on his visits to England, his
Briefe aus England, with admirable descriptions of
GarrickDavid Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
's acting, are the most attractive of his writings published during his lifetime. He also published from 1794 to 1799 an
Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche, in which he described the satirical details in
William HogarthWilliam Hogarth was a major English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from excellent realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral...
's prints.
Freud (in his "Why War?" letter to Einstein) mentions Lichtenberg's invention of a "Compass of Motives" in a discussion on the combination of human compounded motives and quotes him as saying, "The motives that lead us to do anything might be arranged like the thirty-two winds and might be given names on the same pattern: for instance, 'food-food-fame' or 'fame-fame-food'."
Selected bibliography
Works published during his lifetime
- Briefe aus England, 1776–78
- Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen, 1778
- Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, 1780–85 (ed. by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Georg Forster)
- Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes, 1782
- Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche, 1794–1799
Complete works in German
- Schriften und Briefe, 1968–72 (4 vols., ed. by Wolfgang Promies)
English translations
- The Lichtenberg Reader, 1959 (trans. and ed. by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield)
- The World of Hogarth. Lichtenberg's Commentaries on Hogarth's Engravings, 1966 (trans. by Innes and Gustav Herdan)
- Hogarth on High Life. The Marriage à la Mode Series, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Commentaries, 1970 (trans. and ed. by Arthur S. Wensinger and W. B. Coley)
- Aphorisms, 1990 (trans. with an introduction and notes by R. J. Hollingdale
Reginald John Hollingdale was best known as a biographer and a translator of German philosophy and literature, especially the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Goethe, E.T.A. Hoffmann, G. C. Lichtenberg, and Schopenhauer. Hollingdale was also elected president of The Friedrich Nietzsche Society in 1989...
), ISBN 0-14-044519-6, reprinted as The Waste Books, 2000, ISBN 9780940322509
External links