Ludwig A. Colding

Ludwig August Colding ( born July 13, 1815 in Arnakke at Holbæk, † 1888) was a Danish physicist and engineer. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of conservation of energy and the mechanical theory of heat.

Colding was the son of a former naval officer and farmer. At first he was a carpenter and joined in 1837 as advised by the physicist Hans Christian Ørsted, a family friend, in the Polytechnic School in Copenhagen, in 1841 he graduated. In 1845 he was road construction inspector and 1847 additional inspector of gas and water works in Copenhagen. In 1858 he was engineer of the city of Copenhagen. 1865 Colding was then professor of the Polytechnic School. In 1886 he went as an engineer in retirement.

In 1853 he exhibited with the chemist Julius Thomsen that cholera spread through drinking water in Copenhagen. Colding was also involved in large-scale drainage works in the area of Copenhagen.

In his spare time Colding busy with the natural sciences. In 1872 he initiated the establishment of the Danish Meteorological Institute. In the field of physics Colding is considered a pioneer of the mechanical theory of heat and postulated independently of Mayer and Joule energy conservation law. First, his contribution was observed to little and also later he stood in the shadow of Mayer and Joule, although already Hermann von Helmholtz Colding acknowledged ( article by Colding in the Notices of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences from 1843 ). Colding was influenced by natural philosophy, among others from the writings of Ørsted, under whose influence he carried out the first experiments in 1839 ( on the compressibility of water) and published. In 1852 he published a value of the mechanical equivalent of heat, which came very close today.

Since 1856 he was a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and in 1875 he became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and in 1886 a Knight of the Dannebrog Order. In 1871 he became an honorary doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.

Works

Most in the reports of the Society of Sciences in Copenhagen.

• The tropical cyclones. Copenhagen ( 1871)
• The motions of underground waters. Copenhagen ( 1872)
• The storms and ravages of the sea in 1872. Copenhagen ( 1881)

For energy conservation:

• Theses on forces ( Danish), in the Notices of the Danish Academy of Sciences 1843
• On the history of the principle of the conservation of energy, Philosophical Magazine, Vol 27, 1863, pp. 56-64.
• On the universal powers of nature and Their mutual dependence, Philosophical Magazine, Bd.42, 1871, pp. 1-20.