Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs

Gustavus Detlef Hinrichs ( born December 2, 1836 Danish Lunden, Holstein, † February 14, 1923 in St. Louis, USA ) was a chemist.

His parents were Johann Detlev Hinrichs and Caroline Catharine Elizabeth, daughter of the Danish officer Carl Gustav Andersen. At the age of 13 he ran away from home to support the Germans against the integration of Schleswig in Denmark. In July he took part in the Battle of Idstedt as a drummer boy. From 1853 to 1856 he was a student at the Polytechnic School, and then he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. In Copenhagen, he was a friend of Hans Christian Andersen. Last year he was an assistant biologist Daniel Frederik Eschricht ( 1798-1863 ). In April 1860 he married Auguste CF Springer ( 1839-1865 ) from Rendsburg.

In the summer of 1861, he emigrated to the United States, perhaps because he did not want to serve in the Danish army. He settled in Davenport ( Iowa) and taught at a district school and later at the high school.

In August 1863 he was at the University of Iowa Teacher of Modern Languages ​​. In June 1864 he became professor of physics at the Department of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy. He was also Director of the Laboratory, and Professor of Chemistry at the Faculty of Medicine.

After the death of his wife, with whom he had children Gustavus John (Farmer ) and Anna ( musician and writer ), 1867, he married her younger sister, Anna Catharina Springer ( 1842-1910 ). Her son was Carl Gustave (chemist).

In 1868, he was also a chemist of the United States Geological Survey. In 1870, he earned his A.M. at Griswold College in Poultney, Vermont, in 1872 his MD at the Missouri Medical College in 1884 and his LL.D. at Griswold College.

In the 1870s he gave The American Scientific Monthly out. In 1875 he organized the first in Iowa Weather Service in the U.S., he first privately funded and whose director he was until 1889.

From the 1870s the funds were cut at the university. 1885/86 he had for religious and political reasons to give up his chair in Iowa.

In 1889 he became professor of chemistry at the College of Pharmacy in St. Louis and in 1903 professor of chemistry at the medical faculty of the University in St.Louis. In 1907, he retired in.

He developed an early age a hypothesis about a primary matter, which he named as already Leibnitz Pantogen. Since chlorine had an atomic mass of 35.5, he concluded that this primary matter must have half the atomic mass of hydrogen. From this idea he developed until 1867 a spiral periodic table.