Paul Erman

Paul Erman (* February 29, 1764 in Berlin, † October 11, 1851 in Berlin) was a German physicist.

Family Erman

The Erman family came from Mulhouse in Alsace and was originally called Ermendinger. The great-grandfather Paul had converted the name to Erman in his move to Geneva. Paul's father was the historian and Protestant theologian Jean Pierre Erman ( 1735-1814 ). Paul Erman married Caroline Hitzig (1784-1848), a granddaughter of Daniel Itzig, Julius Eduard Hitzig sister and sister in law Nathan Mendelssohn. Her son Georg Adolf Erman (1806-1877) worked in Berlin as a physicist. Your grandchildren were the librarian Wilhelm Erman (1850-1932), the Egyptologist Adolf Erman (1854-1937) and the jurist Henry Erman ( 1857-1940 ). The lawyer Walter Erman, founder of Erman commentary on the Civil Code, was her great-grandchildren.

Life

Paul Erman was born on 29 February 1764 in Berlin, the son of Jean Pierre Erman, the preacher of the Huguenot community, the Director of the French high school ( Collége français) and long -time member of the philosophical class of the Academy. Like his mother tongue was also his education mainly French and received in accordance with the views of the circles, which belonged to his family, an ethical- philosophical direction.

Determined to preachers and already advanced to the threshold of this profession, but he took the test distance. Erman was interested in the natural sciences and has already taken over 18 years, a teacher of Natural History at the French Gymnasium in Berlin, which he himself owed ​​his classical education ( he has a university never visited ) and had previously taught at his father. In 1791 he was appointed professor of physics at the general war school.

In founding the University of Berlin in 1809, he received a full professorship in physics at this university, which he held until his death. In 1806 he became a member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences and was 1810-1841 Secretary of the mathematics and science class at the Academy. In 1819 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.

Work

Erman worked in particular on problems of electricity, magnetism, Hygrologie, optics and physiology, where he made ​​important contributions. Although he had made up to the age of nearly 40 years, their own studies known and some are laid down only unfinished work in the memoirs of the academy and in Ludwig Gilbert's Annalen der Physik and Poggendorff's Annals of Physics and Chemistry in numerous treatises. Among others, he dealt with the effects of the then developed voltaic pile.

He was the first to electroscopic stress symptoms in a column the closing moist conductor observed, and the ability of the earth and the waters, to conduct the galvanic current proved. His discovery of the unipolar lead of the flames and the soap was awarded the 1806 exposed by Napoleon Bonaparte Galvanic prize of 3000 francs by the mathematical-physical class of the French National Institute. Erman one of the first researchers in the field of electrochemical phenomena of movement. Also, the optics, the thermodynamics and the physics of the earth owe him some important contributions. Erman was an opponent of the philosophy of nature and a representative sober and empirical research.