You are here: Home › Author Archives

Author Archives

Harald Sack

chemistry
Franz Achard and the Sugar Beet Revolution

Franz Achard and the Sugar Beet Revolution

Harald Sack
On April 28, 1753, German (Prussian) chemist, physicist and biologist Franz Carl Achard was born. Achard‘s principal discovery was the production of sugar from sugar beets. In 1802, Achard opened the world’s first sugar producing industry plant in Prussia. Just imagine, the world harvested 250,191,362 metric tons of sugar beets in 2013, with Russia being the world’s largest producer. And only about 20% of the world‘s sugar production comes out of sugar…
Read more
philosophy
The Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein

Harald Sack
On April 26, 1889, Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was born. He worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is considered one of the world‘s most famous philosophers. Wittgenstein‘s influence has been felt in nearly every field of the humanities and social sciences. “My work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not…
Read more
art
William Turner – Romantic Preface to Impressionism

William Turner – Romantic Preface to Impressionism

Harald Sack
Probably on April 23, 1775, (and baptized May 14, 1775) English Romanticist landscape painter Joseph Mallord William Turner was born. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting commonly known as “the painter of light“. His…
Read more
physics
The Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer

The Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer

Harald Sack
On April 22, 1904, American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was born. Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those who are credited with being the “father of the atomic bomb” for their role in the Manhattan Project, the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer‘s achievements in physics included the Born–Oppenheimer approximation for molecular wave functions, work on the theory of electrons…
Read more
geology
James David Forbes – Seismology and the Conduction of Heat

James David Forbes – Seismology and the Conduction of Heat

Harald Sack
On April 20, 1809, Scottish physicist and glaciologist James David Forbes was born. Forbes worked extensively on the conduction of heat and seismology. He conducted experiments on the temperature of the Earth at different depths and in different soils near Edinburgh. Later he investigated the laws of heat conduction in bars and invented the seismometer. “I thank God humbly and sincerely. God, who has visited us with many trials, and led us…
Read more
art
Paolo Veronese and the Venetian painting of the Late Renaissance

Paolo Veronese and the Venetian painting of the Late Renaissance

Harald Sack
On April 19, 1588, Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese passed away. The Venetian painter is best known for extremely large history paintings of religion and mythology. Together with Titian and Tintoretto, Veronese is one of the “great trio that dominated Venetian painting of the cinquecento” and the Late Renaissance in the 16th century. “We painters use the same license as poets and madmen.” – Paolo Veronese, Testimony to the Inquisition in Venice (18…
Read more
chemistry
Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran and the Improvement of Spectroscopy

Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran and the Improvement of Spectroscopy

Harald Sack
On April 18, 1838, French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran was born. Lecoq de Boisbaudran improved spectroscopic methods which had recently been developed by Paul Kirchhoff. Furthermore he is known for his discoveries of the chemical elements gallium, samarium and dysprosium. Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran – Early Years Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran belonged to the ancient Protestant nobility of Poitou and Angoumois, whose considerable fortune, however, disappeared after the revocation of the Edict of…
Read more
chemistry
Ernest Solvay and his Love for Physics

Ernest Solvay and his Love for Physics

Harald Sack
On April 16, 1838, Belgian chemist, industrialist and philanthropist Ernest Gaston Joseph Solvay was born. Solvay invented the Solvay Process (1863), a commercially viable ammonia-soda process for producing soda ash (sodium carbonate), widely used in the manufacture of such products as glass and soap. In 1911, he began a series of important conferences in physics, known as the Solvay Conferences, whose participants included luminaries such as Max Planck, Ernest Rutherford, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, Henri…
Read more
architecture
Filippo Brunelleschi – the first modern Engineer

Filippo Brunelleschi – the first modern Engineer

Harald Sack
On April 15, 1446, Italian Renaissance architect, designer, sculptor, and engineer Filippo Brunelleschi passed away. He is considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture and is now recognized to be the first modern engineer. In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world. He is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral. Filippo Brunelleschi – Early Years Filippo Brunelleschi was the…
Read more
astronomy
Edward Walter Maunder and the Sunspots

Edward Walter Maunder and the Sunspots

Harald Sack
On April 12, 1851, British astronomer Edward Walter Maunder was born. Maunder was the first to take the British Civil Service Commission examination for the post of photographic and spectroscopic assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He is best remembered for his study of sunspots and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 that is now known as the Maunder Minimum. “If we…
Read more
Relation Browser
Timeline
0 Recommended Articles:
0 Recommended Articles: