Background
Friedrich Gren was born on May 1, 1760, in Bernburg, Germany. He was the eldest son of a Swedish immigrant hatter.
Collegienpl. 1, 38350 Helmstedt, Germany
Friedrich entered the University of Helmstedt in 1782.
Universitätsplatz 10, 06108 Halle (Saale), Germany
In 1783 Friedrich went on to Halle University (now Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg), where he continued his studies and took a Doctor of Medicine in 1786 and a Ph.D. in 1787.
Friedrich Gren was born on May 1, 1760, in Bernburg, Germany. He was the eldest son of a Swedish immigrant hatter.
Friedrich Gren was destined for the clergy. But the death of his father forced him to abandon his formal education and prepare for a pharmaceutical career. He entered the University of Helmstedt in 1782. In 1783 he went on to Halle University (now Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg), where he continued his studies and took a Doctor of Medicine in 1786 and a Ph.D. in 1787.
In 1788 Gren became a professor of chemistry and physics at the University of Halle. He remained in this post until his death ten years later.
Gren made his mark on German scientific life as an author of texts, a journal editor and a theorist in chemistry and physics. Both his sense of the inadequacy of existing works and his need for additional income led him to devote much time to writing textbooks. The books were well received, some continuing to appear long after his death. Chemistry was the subject of his first text, The Systematisches Handbuch der gesammten Chemie. He subsequently published Grudriss der Naturlehre, Grundriss der Pharmakologie, Handbuch der Pharmakologie, and Grundriss der Chemie.
Inspired by the example of his former teacher and patron Crell, Gren founded a periodical for the mathematical and chemical branches of natural science. Under his editorship, the Journal der Physik, which was succeeded by the Neues Journal der Physik, soon became Germany’s most exciting scientific journal. After Gren’s death, it was continued by his colleague Ludwig Wilhelm Gilbert, and subsequent editors, as the Annalen der Physik.
(Volume 3)
1790(Volume 1)
1798(Volume 2)
1798(Volume 1)
1787(Volume 2)
1790Gren first attracted attention as a theorist by proposing that phlogiston has negative weight in his Dissertatio inauguralis physico-medica sistens observationes et experimenta circa genesin aëris fixi et phlogisticati. His pride in the phlogiston theory’s German origins apparently led him to try to rescue it from the difficulties created by the new discoveries with gases. Although equally nationalistic, most German chemists rejected Gren’s proposal as absurd, embracing instead Richard Kirwan’s system, which identified hydrogen as phlogiston. Undaunted, Gren continued to campaign for the negative weight of phlogiston until 1790, when the physicist Johann Tobias Mayer persuaded him to abandon the view with arguments based on the motion of pendulums.
That same year Gren announced that the empirical cornerstone of Lavoisier’s antiphlogistic theory lacked grounding - pure red calx of mercury (mercuric oxide) did not yield any gas when it was reduced. Two years later his claim was supported by Johann Friedrich Westrumb, a widely respected experimentalist. A bitter debate ensued between Lavoisier’s German proponents and the German phlogistonists. The turning point in the antiphlogistic revolution in Germany came by mid-1793, when Gren and his allies were discredited.
As a consequence of this defeat, Gren soon adopted the compromise phlogiston theory of Johann Gottfried Leonhardi and Jeremias Benjamin Richter. This theory differed but slightly from Lavoisier’s, treating phlogiston as a component of all substances which could be oxidized. Gren’s support of this theory helped prepare the way for the ultimate acceptance of Lavoisier’s theory. In the mid-1790’s, Gren also helped prepare the way for the penetration of Kant’s “dynamic system” into German chemistry and physics by giving it very favorably, if brief, attention in his publications.