Johann Philipp Gustav von Jolly (26 September 1809 – 24 December 1884) was a German

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

and

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

. Born in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's ...

as the son of merchant Louis Jolly and Marie Eleonore Jolly, he studied science in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

and Berlin. After his studies, he was appointed professor of mathematics in

in 1839 and in physics in 1846. He moved to

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

in 1854 where he took the position once held by Georg Simon Ohm. In 1854 he was knighted (and henceforth referred to as von Jolly). Jolly was first and foremost an experimental physicist. He measured the acceleration due to gravity with precision weights and also worked on

osmosis Osmosis (, ) is the spontaneous net movement or diffusion of solvent molecules through a selectively-permeable membrane from a region of high water potential (region of lower solute concentration) to a region of low water potential (region o ...

. One of his students at the

University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich or LMU; german: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It is Germany's sixth-oldest university in continuous operatio ...

was

Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (, ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial contributions to theoretical p ...

, whom he advised in 1878 not to go into physics, saying, "in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes." Planck replied that he didn't wish to discover new things, only to understand the known fundamentals of the field. Nevertheless, Planck's work opened up the field of quantum physics. Jolly died in Munich.

Selected works

* ''Anleitung zur Differential- und Integralrechnung'', 1846 – Manual of differential and

integral calculus In mathematics, an integral assigns numbers to Function (mathematics), functions in a way that describes Displacement (geometry), displacement, area, volume, and other concepts that arise by combining infinitesimal data. The process of finding ...

. * ''Die principien der mechanik'', 1852 – Principles of mechanics. * ''Die Anwendung der Waage auf Probleme der Gravitation'', 1878 – Application of the scale to problems of gravitation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jolly, Philipp von 19th-century German physicists 19th-century German mathematicians Science teachers Bavarian nobility Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Academic staff of Heidelberg University 1809 births 1884 deaths Scientists from Mannheim People from the Grand Duchy of Baden Heidelberg University alumni University of Vienna alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni

Selected works

See also

References