Franz Ulrich Theodor Aepinus (13 December 172410 August 1802) was a German mathematician, scientist, and

natural philosopher Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe, while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the developme ...

residing in the

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire that spanned most of northern Eurasia from its establishment in November 1721 until the proclamation of the Russian Republic in September 1917. At its height in the late 19th century, it covered about , roughl ...

. Aepinus is best known for his researches, theoretical and experimental, in electricity and magnetism.

Early life

He was born at

Rostock Rostock (; Polabian language, Polabian: ''Roztoc''), officially the Hanseatic and University City of Rostock (), is the largest city in the German States of Germany, state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and lies in the Mecklenburgian part of the sta ...

in the

Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin The Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin () was a duchy in northern Germany created in 1701, when Frederick William and Adolphus Frederick II divided the Duchy of Mecklenburg between Schwerin and Strelitz. Ruled by the successors of the Nikloting H ...

. He was descended from

Johannes Aepinus Johannes Aepinus (Johann Hoeck) (1499–1553) was a German Lutheran theologian, the first List of bishops of Hamburg#Superintendents of Hamburg (1532–1593), Superintendent of Hamburg from 1532 to 1553, presiding as spiritual leader over the Luthe ...

(1499–1553), the first to adopt the Greek form (αἰπεινός) of the family name Hugk or Huck, and a leading theologian and controversialist at the time of the

Protestant Reformation The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and ...

Career

After studying

medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...

for a time, Franz Aepinus devoted himself to the physical and mathematical sciences, in which he soon gained such distinction that he was admitted a member of the

Prussian Academy of Sciences The Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences () was an academy established in Berlin, Germany on 11 July 1700, four years after the Prussian Academy of Arts, or "Arts Academy," to which "Berlin Academy" may also refer. In the 18th century, when Frenc ...

. In 1755, he was briefly the director of the

Astronomisches Rechen-Institut The Astronomical Calculation Institute (; ARI) is a research institute in Heidelberg, Germany, with origins dating back from the 1700s. Beginning in 2005, the ARI became part of the Center for Astronomy at Heidelberg University (', ). Previous ...

. In 1757, he settled in

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

as member of the

Russian Academy of Sciences The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across the Russian Federation; and additional scientific and social units such ...

and professor of physics, and remained there till his retirement in 1798. The rest of his life was spent at

Dorpat Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 97,759 (as of 2024). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the ...

. He enjoyed the favor of Empress

Catherine II of Russia Catherine II. (born Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter I ...

, who appointed him tutor to her son

Paul Paul may refer to: People * Paul (given name), a given name, including a list of people * Paul (surname), a list of people * Paul the Apostle, an apostle who wrote many of the books of the New Testament * Ray Hildebrand, half of the singing duo ...

, and endeavored, without success, to establish normal schools throughout the empire under his direction. In 1760, Aepinus was elected a foreign member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

Works

His principal work, ''Tentamen Theoriae Electricitatis et Magnetismi'' (An Attempt at a Theory of Electricity and Magnetism), published at St. Petersburg in 1759, was the first systematic attempt to apply mathematical reasoning to these subjects. He also published a treatise, in 1761, ''De Distributione Caloris per Tellurem'' (On the Distribution of Heat in the Earth), and he was the author of memoirs on different subjects in

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

mechanics Mechanics () is the area of physics concerned with the relationships between force, matter, and motion among Physical object, physical objects. Forces applied to objects may result in Displacement (vector), displacements, which are changes of ...

optics Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of optical instruments, instruments that use or Photodetector, detect it. Optics usually describes t ...

and pure

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

, contained in the journals of the learned societies of

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of 5,601, ...

and

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. His discussion of the effects of

parallax Parallax is a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different sightline, lines of sight and is measured by the angle or half-angle of inclination between those two lines. Due to perspective (graphica ...

in the transit of a planet over the sun's disc excited great interest, having appeared (in 1764) between the dates of the two transits of

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

that took place in the 18th century.

Electrical theories

Aepinus was the first to show that a theory of

action at a distance Action at a distance is the concept in physics that an object's motion (physics), motion can be affected by another object without the two being in Contact mechanics, physical contact; that is, it is the concept of the non-local interaction of ob ...

for electricity provides simple explanation for experimental findings now known as

electrostatic induction Electrostatic induction, also known as "electrostatic influence" or simply "influence" in Europe and Latin America, is a redistribution of electric charge in an object that is caused by the influence of nearby charges. In the presence of a charg ...

, laying the foundations for

electrostatics Electrostatics is a branch of physics that studies slow-moving or stationary electric charges. Since classical antiquity, classical times, it has been known that some materials, such as amber, attract lightweight particles after triboelectric e ...

His theory resembled Newton's approach to gravity in that it relied on unexplained

;Home, Roderick Weir. "Aepinus's Essay on the Theory of Electricity and Magnetism". United States, Princeton University Press, 2015. also like Newton Aepinus believed that the transmission of force required contact. These seeming contradictions reflect the modern scientific concept of approximate models of physical phenomena.

Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish ( ; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable a ...

devised theories of electricity which were essentially the same, yet had been framed without any communication between these two philosophers. Aepinus published his theory about ten years before that of Cavendish. These are theories which eventually put to rest the idea of two fluids.

References

External links