Background
Wiedemann was born at Berlin.
physicist university professor
Wiedemann was born at Berlin.
Wiedemann was born at Berlin. After attending a private school as well as the Cölnische Humanistische Gymnasium, he entered the University of Berlin in 1844 where took his doctor"s degree three years later under the supervision of Heinrich Gustav Magnus. His thesis on that occasion was devoted to a question in organic chemistry, for he held the opinion that the study of chemistry is an indispensable preliminary to the pursuit of physics, which was his ultimate aim.
In Berlin he made the acquaintance of Hermann von Helmholtz at the house of Heinrich Gustav Magnus and was one of the founders of the Berlin Physical Society.
In 1854 he left Berlin to become professor of physics in Basel, nine years later he moved to Braunschweig and in 1866 to Karlsruhe. In 1871 he accepted the chair of physical chemistry at Leipzig. The attention he had paid to chemistry in the earlier part of his career enabled him to hold his own in this position, but he found his work more congenial when in 1887 he was transferred to the professorship of physics.
With Rudolph Franz, Wiedemann developed the Wiedemann–Franz law relating thermal and electrical conductivity in 1853.
He died at Leipzig on March 24, 1899. August Hagenbach was among his students.
But his original work was also important. His data for the thermal conductivity of various metals were for long the most trustworthy at the disposal of physicists, and his determination of the ohm in terms of the specific resistance of mercury showed remarkable skill in quantitative research.
He carried out a number of magnetic investigations which resulted in the discovery of many interesting phenomena, some of which have been rediscovered by others
They related among other things to the effect of mechanical strain on the magnetic properties of the magnetic metals, to the relation between the chemical composition of compound bodies and their magnetic properties, and to a curious parallelism between the laws of torsion and of magnetism (see Wiedemann effect). He also investigated electrical endosmosis and the electrical resistance of electrolytes.
Royal Society; Saxonian Academy of Sciences. Russian Academy of Sciences. Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.