Abstract
WE are called upon to chronicle the death, at Leipzig, on January 26, of Prof. Ernst Heinrich Weber, whose name is so closely united with the fundamental principles of modern optics and acoustics. He was born at Wittenberg, June 24, 1795, and after having studied at the university of that city received, in 1815, the degree of M.D. Two years later he published a short work on the anatomy of the sympathetic nerves, which brought his name at once into prominence. The following year he was appointed extraordinary professor of anatomy at the University of Leipzig, and in 1821 he became ordinary professor of human anatomy. He was early well known by his edition of Hildebrandt's “Anatomic,” of which he wrote anew a considerable part in 1830. The chair of physiology was offered to him in 1840, and he actively fulfilled the duties of this position until a short time before his death. During this period he issued several manuals of physiology, and published a number of investigations, the most valuable of which are gathered together in his book “Annotationes anatomicas et physiologicæ” (1851). Science is, however, chiefly indebted to Prof. Weber for the classical researches carried out by him and his brother Wilheltn Eduard while still young men, on which is grounded the celebrated wave-theory. The work in which their investigations are recorded—“Die Wellenlehre auf Experiments gegründet” (1825), is a remarkable relation of the most delicate and ingenious observations ever undertaken to establish a series of physical laws. Among the most notable of these might be mentioned the experiments on waves of water in mirrored troughs, by means of which they found that the particles near the surface move in circular paths, while those deeper in the liquid describe ellipses, the horizontal axes of which are longer than the vertical. By another series of comparative observations on water and mercury the law was established that waves moved with equal rapidity on the surfaces of different mediums, while the rapidity increases in both cases with the depth of the liquid. These and a multitude of other facts, studied and elaborated in the most scrupulous and conscientious manner, form the basis for the whole theoretical structure accepted at present as explanatory of the phenomena of light and sound. So thoroughly and scientifically were these researches carried out that subsequent physicists have never been called upon to correct them. In 1850 Prof. Weber completed an extensive series of experiments designed to study the wave-movement in the arterial system and explain the fact that the pulse-beat was felt at the chin a fraction of a second sooner than in the foot. The results showed that the pulse-beat travels with a rapidity of about thirty-five feet per second, and that in general the rapidity of a wave in small elastic tubes is not affected by the increase of pressure on the walls. At a later date Prof. Weber published some interesting results of experiments on the mechanism of the ear, as well as on the microscopic phenomena visible on bringing together alcohol and resin suspended in water in capillary spaces.
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Ernst Heinrich Weber . Nature 17, 286 (1878). https://doi.org/10.1038/017286a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/017286a0