Emil Wohlwill

Emil Wohlwill (* November 24, 1835 in Seesen, † February 2nd 1912 in Hamburg ) was a German chemist and science historian.

Life

Wohlwill spent his childhood in Seesen and Blankenburg. In 1851 he went to Hamburg, there to visit the Johanneum and the Academic Gymnasium. In 1855, he studied chemistry in Heidelberg, Berlin and Göttingen.

After his return to Hamburg, he taught physics and initially worked as a commercial chemist before he took a job as an analytical chemist at the Elbhütten - Affiniergesellschaft. Here he dealt with the separation of non-ferrous metals. 1875 he first made ​​a breakthrough in the divorce of copper and silver, later also in gold. His electrolytic process for divorce is now known as the Wohlwill process.

In parallel, Wohlwill sat apart with the history of science. In the center of his observations was Galileo Galilei. For years he worked on a book about the physicist, which was ultimately never completed. The first volume appeared in 1909 under the title " Galileo and his struggle for the Copernican theory ", a second band was collected from the estate and published in 1926.

Well Wills daughter Gretchen Wohlwill was a famous Hamburg painter.