Abstract
OTTO PETTERSSON, chemist, physicist and hydrographer, was born in Gothenburg in February 1848, and died there on January 16, 1941. He took his degree at Uppsala in 1882, and began work—as an inorganic chemist, studying selenium and beryllium while his friend Theodor Cleve was studying the rare earths; but he soon turned to physical chemistry, which was coming to the front just then, and had a long paper in NATURE on a “New Principle of Measuring Heat”, in 1884, nearly sixty years ago (NATURE, 30, 320; 1884). Heat phenomena in general, specific heats, latent heats and heats of crystallization, led him towards hydrography by way of the temperature and ice-conditions of the Baltic and Arctic Seas; and he got his chance when Norden-skiold brought the j'Vega home and asked him to report on the hydrography of the Siberian Sea. A careful determination of the maximal density-point of sea-water at various salinities formed part of this report, and the work brought him into contact with John Murray, and with Tait, who was then busy with the temperature observations of the Challenger.
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THOMPSON, D. Dr. Otto Pettersson. Nature 147, 701–702 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/147701a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/147701a0