Alexander Alexandrovich Eichenwald (russian: Александр Александрович Эйхенвальд 4 January 1864 – 12 September 1944) was a Russian experimental physicist who worked on electrodynamics. He conducted experiments on electromagnetism, electrical fields, and on the construction of instruments to measure magnetic fields. His most famous experiment, following those of

Wilhelm Röntgen Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (; ; 27 March 184510 February 1923) was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achie ...

, examined the predictions of

James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell (13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879) was a Scottish mathematician and scientist responsible for the classical theory of electromagnetic radiation, which was the first theory to describe electricity, magnetism and ligh ...

. Named after them as the Röntgen-Eichenwald experiment, this demonstrated that the movement of static charges was no different from electric currents in that they produced an electromagnetic field. Eichenwald was born in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

where his father was an artistic portrait photographer while his mother was a musician. An interest in music among the children made him interested in acoustics. While at high school he became a friend of P. N. Lebedev and graduated from

Moscow University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

in physics and mathematics. He then joined the St Petersburg Railway Institute and studied engineering after which he went to the

University of Strasbourg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ...

where he focused on experimental physics under K.F. Braun and on theoretical physics under

Emil Cohn Emil Georg Cohn (28 September 1854 – 28 January 1944), was a German physicist. Life Cohn was born in Neustrelitz, Mecklenburg on 28 September 1854. He was the son of August Cohn, a lawyer, and Charlotte Cohn. At the age of 17, Cohn began to ...

. His doctorate in 1897 was on the absorption of electrical waves by electrolytes. He worked at the Moscow Engineering College from 1897 where his work included a demonstration of the magnetic field created by moving electrical charges. He constructed a simple magnetometer in 1903. He became director of the Railway Engineers Institute from 1905 and also taught at the Moscow University from 1906. After the death of Lebedev he presided over the Moscow Physics Society and from 1917 he was involved in organizing higher education in physics. Diagnosed with cancer he moved to Milan and wrote a textbook on electricity that went through multiple editions. In 1903 he demonstrated that static charges on a disc that was rotated could generate a magnetic field.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eichenwald, Alexander 1864 births 1944 deaths 20th-century Russian physicists Soviet physicists