Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1 July 1742 – 24 February 1799) was a German physicist, satirist, and someone who loved everything about England. He was the first person in Germany to have a special job as a teacher just for doing experiments with science.

He is best known for the notes he wrote in his private books after he died. These books were like scrapbooks where he collected his thoughts and ideas.

Lichtenberg also made an important discovery in science. He found that when electricity passes through certain materials, it makes patterns that look like trees. These patterns are now called Lichtenberg figures.

Life

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was born in Ober-Ramstadt near Darmstadt, in the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt, the youngest of 17 children. His father was a pastor who worked his way up in the church. Lichtenberg was smart from a young age and wanted to study mathematics, but his family could not pay for lessons. With help from Ludwig VIII, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, he entered the University of Göttingen in 1763.

In 1769, he became a teacher of physics and later a full professor. He visited England twice and was warmly welcomed by George III and Queen Charlotte. He was one of the first scientists to use experiments in his lessons and introduced Benjamin Franklin's lightning rod to Germany. He made friends with many famous thinkers of his time, including Goethe and Immanuel Kant. He was also a member of the Royal Society in 1793.

Lichtenberg had a curved spine from childhood, which made him shorter than others. He dreamed of writing a novel but never finished more than a few pages. He died in Göttingen in 1799 after a short illness at the age of 56.

Scrap books

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg kept special notebooks called "scrapbooks" from when he was a student until he passed away. He named them Sudelbücher in German, and each notebook was given a letter from A to L.

After Lichtenberg died, his family shared these notebooks with the world. Sadly, some of the notebooks were lost or destroyed, but the ones that remain are kept at a university in Göttingen.

These notebooks are full of interesting things he found, like quotes, book titles, personal thoughts, and smart observations about people. They show how he thought carefully and used experiments to understand science better. One of his famous ideas was that as we learn more about nature, our theories might change, but we should keep track of everything we discover until we can make a better theory.

Other works

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg was a famous German writer known for his sharp and funny writing. He often got into debates with other well-known people of his time. For example, he made fun of a scientist named Johann Kaspar Lavater who studied faces to guess people's characters, and he wrote a strong satire about another writer named Johann Heinrich Voss and his ideas about how to say words from ancient Greece.

Lichtenberg also wrote about his trips to England, sharing exciting stories about a famous actor named David Garrick. He wrote a special calendar called the Göttinger Taschen Calender that taught people about science and nature in a fun way. He also helped write a magazine and took over a science textbook after his friend passed away. Later, he wrote about the funny details in artwork by another famous creator named William Hogarth.

Legacy

Lichtenberg's notebooks became very famous after he died, and many important thinkers admired his work. People like Arthur Schopenhauer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe praised his clever ideas and sharp observations.

As a scientist, Lichtenberg made important discoveries about electricity. He found special branching patterns, now called Lichtenberg figures, by using static electricity. He also created a large machine to produce static electricity, which helped lead to the development of modern copying technology. A crater on the Moon and an asteroid, 7970 Lichtenberg, are named after him. He even helped create the standard paper sizes we use today, like A4 paper.

Selected bibliography

Here are some important works by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.

Works published during his lifetime

• Briefe aus England, 1776–78
• Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen, 1778
• Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, 1780–85 (ed. by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Georg Forster)
• Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes, 1782
• Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche, 1794–1799

Complete works in German

• Schriften und Briefe, 1968–72 (4 vols., ed. by Wolfgang Promies)

English translations

• The Reflections of Lichtenberg, Swan Sonnenschein, 1908 (selected and translated by Norman Alliston).
• Lichtenberg's Visits to England, as Described in his Letters and Diaries, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1938 (trans. and ed., by Margaret L. Mare and W. H. Quarrell)
• The Lichtenberg Reader, Beacon Press, 1959 (trans. and ed. by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield)
• The World of Hogarth. Lichtenberg's Commentaries on Hogarth's Engravings, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966 (trans. by Innes and Gustav Herdan)
• Hogarth on High Life. The Marriage à la Mode Series, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Commentaries, 1970 (trans. and ed. by Arthur S. Wensinger and W. B. Coley)
• Aphorisms, Penguin, 1990 (trans. with an introduction and notes by R. J. Hollingdale), ISBN 0-14-044519-6, reprinted as The Waste Books, 2000, ISBN 978-0-940322-50-9
• Lichtenberg: Aphorisms & Letters, Johnathan Cape, 1969 (trans. and ed. by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield), SBN 224-61286-7
• G.C. Lichtenberg: Philosophical Writings, (trans. and ed. by Steven Tester), Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012.