Daniel Gralath
Daniel Gralath (* May 30, 1708 in Gdansk, † July 23, 1767 in Danzig) was a German physicist and mayor of the Gdańsk City law. He was co-founder of the Natural History Society in Gdansk.
Gralath had a daughter and five sons, including the legal scholar and local historian Daniel Gralath the younger (with whom he was mistaken in older sources often ) and Karl Friedrich von Gralath ( 1741-1818 ), who also was mayor of Gdansk.
Life
Gralath (circa 1673-1713 ) was born as the son of Danzig merchant Karl Ludwig Gralath whose native of Regensburg father had in 1690 acquired the citizenship of Gdansk. He attended the Academic Gymnasium Danzig and already dealt at this time with math and physics. From 1728, he studied law at Halle and Marburg, where he met the polymath and philosopher Christian Wolff. After completing his studies in Leiden, he traveled with his brother France. 1734 he returned to Danzig and devoted himself as a private citizen science. In 1737 he married Dorothea Juliana Klein ( 1718-1788 ). With his father Jacob Theodor Klein in 1743, he founded the Society for Natural Sciences and became its director. Gralath held many offices of the City Council: He was quartermaster, alderman and councilor before he became mayor of Gdansk in 1763. At the suggestion and with the financial support Gralaths the Grand Avenue between Gdańsk and suburban Long Fuhr was 1767-1769 and planted with Dutch Linden. Today the road under the name Aleja Zwycięstwa ( German Siegesallee ) is part of the main artery of Danzig.
Gralath worked with Gottfried Lengnich Danziger and other councilors on the constitutional history of Danzig.
As a physicist Gralaths interests were widespread. The most successful, he worked for the theory of electricity. In March 1746 he repeated the experiment Ewald Georg von Kleist that the principle of the Leyden jar had this 1745 can be discovered, which was initially known as Kleistian bottle. Gralaths bottle into which he had put an iron wire was filled with water. Their electricity was enough to put a human chain from 20 people a shock. He has published over the new instrument in 1747 in the experiments and treatises of the Natural History Society. Gralath was the first of the merged several of these bottles to a battery in order to enhance their impact. He tried also the first to measure the force between electrically charged bodies.
Daniel was Gralath since 1752 Honorary Member, founded by Johann Matthias Gesner Royal German Society in Göttingen.
Writings (selection )
- Exercitatio physica. De origine fontium. Typis Thomae locust writer, Gdansk 1727
- History of electricity, 3 volumes, Gdansk 1747-1756
- Electric Library. In: Proceedings of the Natural History Society to Gdansk 1747, pp. 525-558