Everything about Franz Ernst Neumann totally explained
Franz Ernst Neumann (
September 11,
1798 -
May 23,
1895) was a
German mineralogist,
physicist and
mathematician.
Life
Neumann was born in
Joachimsthal,
Margraviate of Brandenburg, located not far from
Berlin. In 1815 he interrupted his studies at Berlin to serve as a volunteer in the
Hundred Days against
Napoleon, and was wounded in the
Battle of Ligny. Subsequently he entered
Berlin University as a student of
theology, but soon turned to scientific subjects. His earlier papers were mostly concerned with
crystallography, and the reputation they gained him led to his appointment as
Privatdozent at the
University of Königsberg, where in 1828 he became extraordinary, and in 1829 ordinary, professor of
mineralogy and
physics. His 1831 study on the
specific heats of compounds included what is now known as
Neumann's law: the molecular heat of a compound is equal to the sum of the atomic heats of its constituents.
Devoting himself next to optics, he produced memoirs which entitle him to a high place among the early searchers after a true dynamical theory of light. In 1832, by the aid of a particular hypothesis as to the constitution of the ether, he reached by a rigorous dynamical calculation results agreeing with those obtained by
Augustin Louis Cauchy, and succeeded in deducing laws of double refraction closely resembling those of
Augustin-Jean Fresnel. Later he attacked the problem of giving mathematical expression to the conditions holding for a surface separating two crystalline media, and worked out from theory the laws of double refraction in strained crystalline bodies. He also made important contributions to the mathematical theory of electrodynamics, and in papers published in 1845 and 1847 established mathematically the laws of the induction of electric currents. His last publication, which appeared in 1878, was on spherical harmonics (
Beitrage zur Theorie der Kugelfunctionen).
With the mathematician
Carl Gustav Jacobi, he founded in 1834 the
mathematisch-physikalisches seminar which operated in two sections, one for mathematics and one for mathematical physics. Not every student took both sections. In his section on mathematical physics Neumann taught mathematical methods and as well as the techniques of an exact experimental physics grounded in the type of precision measurement perfected by his astronomer colleague
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel. The objective of his seminar exercises was to perfect one's ability to practice an exact experimental physics through the control of both constant and random experimental errors. Only a few students actually produced original research in the seminar; a notable exception was Gustav Robert Kirchoff who formulated
Kirchhoff's Laws on the basis of his seminar research. His seminar was the model for many others of the same type established after 1834, including that of
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff at
Heidelberg University.
Neumann retired from his professorship in 1876, and died at
Königsberg (now
Kaliningrad,
Russia) in 1895 at the age of 96.
His children were talented. His son,
Carl Gottfried Neumann (1832-1925), became in 1858 Privatdozent, and in 1863 extraordinary professor of mathematics at
Halle. He was then appointed to the ordinary chair of mathematics successively at
Basel (1863),
Tübingen (1865) and
Leipzig (1868).
Works by F. E. Neumann
Further Information
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