Georg Christoph Lichtenberg - Life

Life

Lichtenberg was the youngest of seventeen children of pastor Johann Conrad Lichtenberg. His father, ascending through the ranks of the church hierarchy, eventually became superintendent for Darmstadt. Unusually for a clergyman 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 Lateinschule 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-Darmstadt, who granted sufficient funds. In 1763, Lichtenberg entered Göttingen University, where in 1769 he became extraordinary professor of physics, and six years later ordinary professor. He held this post till his death.

Lichtenberg became a hunchback owing to a malformation of the spine. 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 experiments 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 Kant. In 1784 Alessandro Volta visited Göttingen especially to see the man and his experiments. The eminent mathematician Karl Friedrich Gauss sat in on his lectures. In 1793 he was elected a member of the Royal Society.

As a physicist, today he is remembered for his investigations in electricity, for discovering branching discharge patterns on dielectrics now called Lichtenberg figures. In 1777, he built a large electrophorus in order to generate static electricity through induction. 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 Xerography copy machine technology. By discharging a high voltage point near an insulator, he was able to record strange tree-like patterns in fixed dust. These Lichtenberg figures are considered today to be examples of fractals.

He was one of the first to introduce Benjamin Franklin'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 US and Canada), known as ISO 216, which has A4 as the most commonly used size.

Invited by his students, he visited England twice, from Easter to early summer 1770 and from August 1774 to Christmas 1775, where he was received cordially by George III 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 Margarethe Kellner (1768–1848). He married her in 1789, in order to give her a pension, as he thought he was to die soon. She gave him six children, and outlived him by 49 years.

Lichtenberg was prone to procrastination. He failed to launch the first ever hydrogen balloon, and although he always dreamed of writing a novel à la Fielding's Tom Jones, he never finished more than a few pages. He died at the age of 56, after a short illness.