Abstract
TN the year 1843, Magnus was professor of natural philosophy at Berlin and created a physical colloquium, or, as the obituary notice in NATURE of June 23, 1870, says, “Graduates and undergraduates assembled round him once a week, to enjoy what he called physical conversations. Here students in turn reported on investigations recently published, the master criticising the report, and opening a discussion on those points which appeared to deserve a fuller explanation”. From all accounts, Magnus was an inspiring teacher, and it was under the influence of this colloquium that, two years later, in 1845, six young physicists Beetz, Briicke, Heintz, Karsten, Knoblauch and Emil du Bois-Reymond-founded a society which had as its object, first the communication of original papers, and secondly the issuing of an annual volume of reports on all publications of a physical nature which should have appeared during the year. The society went by the name of the Physikalische Gesellschaft zu Berlin, which in 1899 became the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft, to indicate the nation-wide scope which it had attained. This Society is, then, celebrating this year, on January 14, its ninetieth birthday.
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ANDRADE, E. The Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft. Nature 135, 55–56 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/135055a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/135055a0