Abstract
GEHEIMRAT PAUL HEINRICH RITTER VON GROTH, who died on Dec. 2, 1927, was born on June 23, 1843, at Magdeburg. His father was a portrait painter. His early academic studies were pursued first at the Bergakademie at Freiberg (1862-65) and then at the University of Berlin (1865-67), where he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1868. He was successively assistant in the Department of Physics in the University (1868-70), reader of mineralogy and geology at the Bergakademie in Berlin (1870-72), and in 1872 was appointed professor in the newly constituted University of Strasbourg, where he remained for eleven years until his promotion to the chair at Munich. It was during Groth's tenure of office at Munich that the most important work of his life was accomplished. In 1874 he published his “Tabellarische Ubersicht der einfachen Mineralien” a comprehensive list of the mineral kingdom, containing not only a systematic classification of species, but also a critical survey of views on their chemical composition; subsequent editions with much new material appeared in 1882, 1889, 1898, and were followed in 1921 by a new survey, “Mineralogische Tabellen,” in conjunction with Mieleitner. In 1876 he published his famous “Physikalische Krystallographie,” a most readable and suggestive treatise which was for many generations of teachers and students an attractive introduction to a science that had previously been presented in a very unattractive form. Sir Lazarus Fletcher has recorded the fact that he was led to take up the study of the subject by happening to see a copy of the book in that year. Subsequent enlarged and revised editions appeared in 1885, 1895, 1905.
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M., H. Prof. P. H. Von Groth, For. Mem. R.S.. Nature 121, 98–107 (1928). https://doi.org/10.1038/121098a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/121098a0