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4.04 GRAVES OF RENOWN SCIENTISTS |
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Buried on Göttingen's grave yards
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Awe-inducing testimonies of Göttingen's scientific fame are stones on local graveyards: (Stadtfriedhof, Albani- and Bartholomäus Friedhof).Visitors will find graves of eight Nobel prize winners and of other scientists of international renown. Not all of them earned their main merits at Göttingen's University, but all of them spent here many productive academic years. (Main source: Der Göttinger Stadtfriedhof. Ein Rundgang.Göttinger Tageblatt 2002, 3. Auflage).
Nobel Prize winners who graduated in Göttingen and took their PhDs here (but not buried in Göttingen), may be found  here. (Main source: Mittler, E. & M. Zimon (eds), 2002. Das Göttinger Nobelpreiswunder. 100 jahre Nobelpreis. Göttingen: Niedersächsische Staatsbibliothek).
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), physicist and deep-witted allround scholar.
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Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), physicist, astronomer, and a giant among mathematical giants.
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Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882), chemist, the first to synthesise an organic molecule (Urea).
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Wilhelm Weber (1804-1891), physicist, built the first telegraph (Gauss was collaborator).
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Otto Wallach (1847-1931) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1910 in recognition of his services to organic chemistry and the chemical industry by his pioneer work in the field of alicyclic compounds.
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Max Planck (1858-1947) Nobel Prize in Physics 1918 in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta.
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Walter Nernst (1864-1941) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1920 in recognition of his work in thermochemistry.
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David Hilbert (1862-1943), mathematician, famous for his unifying ideas in number theory.
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Richard Zsigmondy (1865-1929) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1925 for his demonst ration of the heterogenous nature of colloid solutions and for the methods he used, which have since become fundamental in modern colloid chemistry.
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Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916) Founder of modern Astrophysics.
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Adolf Windaus (1876-1959) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1928 for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins.
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Max von Laue (1879-1960), Nobel Prize in Physics 1914 for his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays by crystals.
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Otto Hahn (1879-1968) Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1944 for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei.
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Max Born (1882-1970) Nobel Prize in Physics 1954 for his fundamental research in quantum mechanics, especially for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction.
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The list of credits for portrait photos used for this site may be checked with scienceworld@wolfram.com. The site maintainer does not hold copyrights to these images and therefore cannot grant permission for their reproduction. Photos of the graves are my own and may be copied ad libitum.
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Gallery
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Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), was a charming, hunchbacked, lecherous hypochondriac. He graduated from the University of Göttingen and remained there as a professor for the rest of his life. His friends and admirers included Goethe, Kant and England's King George III. Lichtenberg taught chemistry, geology, physics, meteorology and astronomy. He had many ideas, an insatiable curiosity and wrote about art, philosophy, psychology, morality, but rarely brought books or inventions to completion. For science, therefore, he remains a mere historical footnote. But he is well remembered for thousands of creative aphorisms he jotted in his notebooks.
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"There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers" (Lichtenberg).
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Carl-Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) is a giant among mathematical giants. As a young man he gave a rule-and-compass construction of the 17-gon. He made fundamental contributions to number theory, for which he invented the theory of congruences, a basic tool to this day. His theorems on line and surface integrals lie at the heart of modern physics and are essential for understanding electromagnetism. Gauss was one of the discoverers of non-Euclidean geometry. He developed many computational tools and applied them to computing the orbits of planets and moons. (From J. J. O'Connor and E F Robertson).
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Phenomenology of a creative process: "Finally, two days ago, I succeeded - not on account of my hard efforts, but by the grace of the Lord. Like a sudden flash of lightning, the riddle was solved. I am unable to say what was the conducting thread that connected what I previously knew with what made my success possible".
Gauss, quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Squared (Boston 1972).
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Wilhelm Weber (1800-1882), with his friend Carl Friedrich Gauss, investigated terrestrial magnetism and in 1833 devised an electromagnetic telegraph. The magnetic unit, termed a weber, formerly the coulomb, is named after him. Weber was one of 7 professors at Göttingen to sign a protest and all were dismissed. His work on the ratio between the electrodynamic and electrostatic units of charge in 1855 proved extremely important and was crucial to Maxwell in his electromagnetic theory of light.
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A crater of the moon was named Weber Crater. About 300 mathematicians have lunar features (mostly craters) named after them. My guess is that for Wilhelm Weber one of the largest moon craters has been selected.
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Wilhelm Wöhler (1804-1891) was a student of pioneer chemist Berzelius. In attempting to prepare ammonium cyanate from silver cyanide and ammonium chloride, he accidentally synthesized urea in 1828. This was the first organic synthesis, and a beginning of the end of vitalism theory.
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A friendship between Liebig and Wöhler began in 1825 after they amicably resolved a dispute over two substances that had apparently the same composition—cyanic acid and fulminic acid—but very different characteristics. These and similar substances, called "isomers" by Berzelius, led chemists to suspect that substances are defined not simply by the number and kind of atoms in the molecule but also by the arrangement of those atoms.
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Otto Wallach (1847-1931) received the Nobel Prize in 1910 for his work on alicyclic compounds. Already in his first publication (1884) he raised the question of the diversity of the various members of a chemical group (C10H16), which at that time came under a multitude of names ranging from terpene to camphene, citrene, carvene, cinene, cajuputene, eucalyptine, hesperidine, etc. Utilizing common reagents, he succeeded in characterizing the differences between the structure of these compounds. Nobel presentation speech, here ->.
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Wallach worked so hard that he managed to obtain his doctor's degree after studying for only five semesters. At that time working hours at the Wöhler laboratory were from 7 a.m. till 5 p.m., after which gas was turned off and some work had to be rounded-off under the light of privately bought candles. - Wallach, a workoholic? He remained a bachelor throughout his life.
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Max Planck(1958-1947) received the Nobel Prize in Physics of 1918 in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta. Within two months Planck had made a complete theoretical deduction of his formula renouncing classical physics and introducing the quanta of energy.
"... the whole procedure was an act of despair because a theoretical interpretation had to be found at any price, no matter how high that might be." Nobel Presentation Speech here ->.
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"The outside world is something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life." . ( Max Planck's early motive to take up physics for his academic specialization)
Planck' s stance during the years of German political aberrations was partly based on empirical observatiions. The sight of Prussian and Austrian troops marching into his native town when he was six years olld ishocked him. He lost his eldest son during WW II. In WW II, his house in Berlin was burned down in an air raid. In 1945 his other son was executed when declared guilty of complicity in a plot to kill Hitler.
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Walter Hermann Nernst (1864-1941) received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1920 in recognition of his pre-war work on heat theory and photochemistry. Nernst studied in Zütich, Berlin, Graz, graduated at Würzburg, was appointed as Professor in Berlin (1905), then in Göttingen(1924) where he retired in 1933. He was an early pioneer of Germany's chemical weapons research programme (developed an irritant powder, dianisidine chlorsulphate, fired with bullets in shrapnel shells) during WW I, but these developments were failures. (From:http://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/nernst.htm). Nobel Presentation Speech here ->.
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The Allied troops who faced Nernst's powder at Neuve Chapelle on 27 October 1914, did not notice anything unusual. It is said that German Army Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn's son won a case of champagne for remaining in a cloud of Nernst's "irritant" substance for a full five minutes without exhibiting any signs of discomfort. Was Nernst possibly a saboteur?
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David Hilbert (1862-1943) contributed to many branches of mathematics, including invariants, algebraic number fields, functional analysis, integral equations, mathematical physics, and the calculus of variations. Otto Blumenthal, his first student, wrote about him: "In the analysis of mathematical talent one has to differentiate between the ability to create new concepts that generate new types of thought structures and the gift for sensing deeper connections and underlying unity. In Hilbert's case, his greatness lies in an immensely powerful insight that penetrates into the depths of a question. All of his works contain examples from far-flung fields in which only he was able to discern an interrelatedness and connection with the problem at hand.
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Quotes of David Hilbert:
"I have tried to avoid long numerical computations, thereby following Riemann's postulate that proofs should be given through ideas and not voluminous computations." Report on Number Theory, 1897.
"One can measure the importance of a scientific work by the number of earlier publications rendered superfluous by it."
Quoted in H Eves Mathematical Circles Revisited (Boston 1971).
"Wir müssen wissen, wir werden wissen" (We must know, we shall know). Click to enlarge the gravestone incription at the bottom.
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Richard Adolf Zsigmondy (1865-1929) was awarded, in 1925, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on the heterogeneous nature of colloidal solutions.
After studies in Vienna (Medical Faculty) and Munich (doctorate in organic chemistry), he went to Berlin and accepted a teaching post in Graz. His work on colloids found application in glass industry of Jena. In 1907, he was appointed Director of the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Göttingen University, where he remained until his retirement (1929). Nobel Presentation Speech here ->.
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Zsigmondy's father encouraged his four children's interest in the natural sciences, he died when Zsigmondy was only 15 years old. Zsigmondy's mother encouraged her children to lead an outdoor life, to take an interest in the arts and to follow their own inclinations. Zsigmondy and his brothers spent much of their time climbing, mountaineering, swimming and diving. (In what measure, if at all, have father's and mother's education affected their son's extraordinary achievements?).
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Karl Schwarzschild (873-1916) developed the use of photography for measuring variable stars. He is considered as originator of Astrophysics. He found (1926) a solution to Einstein's equations of gravitation. That is, using Einstein's equation, he determined how spacetime is curved due to the presence of a nonrotating spherical mass. This led to a number of precise physical predictions (e.g., the amount of the deflection of starlight by the sun'S gravitation).
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The sphere on top of the gravestone of Karl Schwarzschild and family members symbolizes, I think, the scientist's prime object of scientific study: Heavenly bodies.
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Adolf Windaus (1876-1959) was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1928 for the services rendered through his research into the constitution of the sterols and their connection with the vitamins. His studies and appointments led him to Freiburg (nedicine, chemistry), Berlin, New York, Innsbruck, and Göttingen (in 1915) where he was Professor of Chemistry until his retirement in 1944. Noteworthy are his discovery of histamine and the analysis of vitmaines. Aside form the Nobel Prize he received honors like the Pasteur Medal, the Goethe Medal, the "Groszes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern", Pour le Merite, Peace Class. Presentation Speech here ->.
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In all his investigations Windaus' starting-point was that of experimental observation, not of theoretical deduction; the inductive method was the most suitable for his talents. (From an internet biography). Today such examples might re-establish tolerance for the diversity of inductive-deductive (theoretical) approaches
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Max von Laue (1879-1960). His best known work for which he received the Nobel Prize for Physics for 1914, was his discovery of the diffraction of X-rays on crystals which proved that X-rays had to be placed on the electromagnetic wave spectrum. v. Laue's career led him to Munich, Zürich, Frankfurt, and Göttingen. But most of his productive time (1919-1943) was spent in Berlin, first with Max Planck and Einstein. His influence on the development of scientific research in Germany was great.
Among the many honours which he was awarded were the Ladenburg Medal, Max-Planck Medal. the Bimala-Churn-Law Gold Medal, a Pour le Mérite, Grand Cross with Star for Federal Services. Nobel Presentation Speech here ->.
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When National Socialists had seized power and Einstein's relativity theory was degraded as Jewish, Max von Laue, expressed opposition in a speech which was widely recognized: "Contrary to all oppression the representatives of science may hold on, with victorious certainty, to the simple sentence: And yet it does move". Von Laue was much esteemed for his character and sound judgment, for his strong sense of justice and fair play. He thought of the achievements of the human with awe and humility and was at heart deeply religious. He asked to let his tombstone bear the statement that he died trusting firmly in the mercy of God. A marked cross seems to accomodate his wish.
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Otto Hahn (1879-1968), Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1944 for his discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei. He spent academic years of learining and research in Marburg, Munich, Berlin, London, and Montreal (under Rutherford). His time in Göttingen, from 1946 to his death in 1968, he was active as reorganizer and President of the Max Planck Society. Among his earliest discoveries, with Lise Meitner, was a new radioactive substance (1907), beta ray spectra (1910), element 91 (Proactinium, 1918).e discovered the fission of uranium and thoriumin 1938, the begin of the Atomic Age. Nobel Presentation Speech here ->.
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Hahn was shocked by the first scandlous misuse of atomic energy in Hieroshima and Nagasaki. He protested repeatedly against such destructive developments. He signed the "Göttinger Erklärung" against the re-armement of the German army with nuclear weapons. "As long as I don't read the newspapers, I feel fine." (Hahn, June, 1959).
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Max Born (1882-1970), physicist, spent years of studies in Breslau, Heidelberg, Zürich, Göttingen, Cambridge, years of a professional life in Berlin, the most productive ones in Göttingen until 1933 when he left for Cambridge to escape from political chaos. Born's work on crystals, quantum theory, electrodynamics was acknowledged by nine honorary doctorates, six academic awards and the Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Order of Merit of the FRG, and the Nobelk Prize for his statistical interpretation of the wavefunction (quantum mechanics). Nobel Presentation Speech here ->.
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"I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actual philosophy." Autobiography
" If God has made the world a perfect mechanism, he has at least conceded so much to our imperfect intellect that in order to predict little parts of it, we need not solve innumerable differential equations, but can use dice with fair sucess." Max Born quoted in H R Pagels, The Cosmic Code
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