Georg Adolf Erman
Georg Adolf Erman ( born May 12, 1806 in Berlin, † July 12, 1877 ) was a German physicist and geologist.
Life
Origin and family
The Erman family was a Huguenot family and came from Mulhouse in Alsace. The family name was originally " Ermendinger ", which had been converted by the great-grandfather Georg Adolf Erman in his relocation to Geneva, " Erman ". Georg Adolf Erman was born as the son of Paul Erman, who also worked as a physicist in Berlin. In 1834 Georg Adolf Erman married the daughter of his teacher Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Bessel Marie. His sons were the librarian Wilhelm Erman (1850-1932), the Egyptologist Adolf Erman (1854-1937) and the lawyer and university professor Henry Erman ( 1857-1940 ).
Academic career
Georg Adolf Erman studied in Berlin and Königsberg natural sciences. In 1832 he was a lecturer and in 1834 professor of physics at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. He also worked several years as a professor of mathematics at the Collège Français Berlin, had previously taught at his father. In 1874 the Royal Society appointed him to its external member.
Around the World
Between 1828 and 1830 he made from its own resources a trip around the world, whose main objective was to get a close-meshed network as possible for the magnetic determination of the earth's circumference. For the first part of his expedition to Erman joined the magnetometric expedition of the Norwegian astronomer Christopher Hansteen, who went to Irkutsk. From there he went on alone and crossed Siberia and northern Asia, from the mouth of the Ob to the Kamchatka Peninsula. There he embarked on the Russian-American colonies. He went over California, Tahiti, Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro. From there he went on Saint Petersburg to Berlin.
The results of his expedition he worked in the 7- volume work, travel around the world by North Asia and the two oceans, which in a historical (5 vols, Berlin 1833-42 ) and in a physical department ( 2 vols, together with Atlas, Berlin 1835-41 ) is divided. In the years 1845-1848 calculated Erman together with H. Petersen from the determined values it geomagnetic phenomena constants to which Gauss for the first time established a theory of terrestrial magnetism.
On behalf of the Imperial Admiralty he completed the calculation of these constants on the basis of geomagnetic phenomena of the year 1829, taking into account the secular variations from all available observations and published the results in 1874 in a view from 13 tables and 6 maps.
Awards and honors
Works
- Around the World by North Asia and the two oceans. Department of History, 3 vols Berlin from 1833 to 1848, academic department, 2 vols Berlin 1835-1841 ( digitized)
- Publisher: Archives for scientific news of Russia. 25 vols Berlin 1841-1867 ( digitized)
- The basics of the Gaussian theory and the phenomena of terrestrial magnetism in 1829. Berlin 1874