Daniel Gralath (30 May 1708 – 23 July 1767) was a physicist and a mayor of Danzig. Gralath was born and died in Danzig (

Gdańsk Gdańsk is a city on the Baltic Sea, Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, Data for territorial unit 2261000. it is Poland's sixth-largest city and principal seaport. Gdań ...

) in the

Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, also referred to as Poland–Lithuania or the First Polish Republic (), was a federation, federative real union between the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania ...

. He came from a well-to-do trade family. He studied law and philosophy in Halle,

Leyden Leiden ( ; ; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 127,046 (31 January 2023), but the city forms one densely connecte ...

and

Marburg Marburg (; ) is a college town, university town in the States of Germany, German federal state () of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf Districts of Germany, district (). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has ...

from 1728 to 1734. Later he became councilman and, in 1763, mayor of Danzig. His father-in-law was Jacob Theodor Klein (1685–1759), a city secretary and a distinguished scientist, nicknamed ''Gedanensium Plinius''. As a physicist, Gralath worked on

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

, founded the Danzig Research Society, and repeated the experiments of Ewald Georg von Kleist with the

Leyden jar A Leyden jar (or Leiden jar, or archaically, Kleistian jar) is an electrical component that stores a high-voltage electric charge (from an external source) between electrical conductors on the inside and outside of a glass jar. It typically co ...

. Gralath improved the design of the Leyden jar and demonstrated its effects on a chain of 20 persons. He was also the first to combine several jars to make a battery, but that claim is disputed. From 1747 to 1756, he published his "History of Electricity" in three parts in issues of ''Versuche und Abhandlungen der Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Danzig'', which may have contributed to the historical judgement that he was the first to combine several Leyden jars.

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