Thomas Johann Seebeck

Thomas Johann Seebeck (born 29 Märzjul / April 9 1770greg in Reval, .. † December 10, 1831 in Berlin) was a Baltic German physicist.

Biography

Thomas Seebeck was born on 9 April 1770, the present-day Tallinn in a wealthy merchant family. His father was of German descent and therefore promoted a medical education of his son at the Universities of Berlin and Göttingen. In 1802 he got his degree as a doctor and practiced in Göttingen. He decided, however, to change to the physical research, he is also a physicist better known than as a doctor. He came on as a private scholar to Jena, Bayreuth and Nuremberg and operational scientific studies.

Seebeck lived from 1795 to 1802 and from 1810 to 1812 in Bayreuth. He also married in 1795 Juliane Ulrike Amalie, a daughter's of the royal Prussian Hofkammerrats Moritz Boyé. In Bayreuth, six of the eight children were born Seebeck.

He met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with whom he worked on the theory of color and the colored light.

He investigated the thermal effect of different colors of the solar spectrum. In 1808 he established the first potassium amalgam and noticed in 1810 the color sensitivity of moist silver (I ) oxide ( precursor to color photography ). In the same year he watched the magnetism of nickel and cobalt. In 1818 he discovered the optical activity ( rotation of the plane of polarization ) of sugar solutions. Then he returned to the University of Berlin and worked on the electrical magnetization of iron and steel. In 1821 he discovered the thermoelectric effect ( Seebeck effect).

Seebeck presented in 1823 to a thermoelectric voltage series and published his work in thermo-magnetic "Magnetic polarization of metals and ores by temperature difference. Treatises of the Prussian Academy of Sciences ". He worked 13 years at the Berlin Academy of Sciences.