Johann Tobias Lowitz (; 25 April 1757 – 7 December 1804) was a German-Russian chemist and pharmacist. He was among the first to notice the clarification of liquids by the use of charcoal for adsorption and applied it for a range of applications.

Biography

Lowitz was born in

Göttingen Göttingen (, ; ; ) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. According to the 2022 German census, t ...

to the mathematician and cartographer Georg Moritz (1722–74) and Dorothea née Riepenhausen (1723–65). In 1767 he moved to

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 ...

along with his father and joined the expedition to the Caspian region during which he and his father were captured by a band of rebels who hanged his father. Lowitz escaped and after returning, studied at the St. Petersburg Gymnasium and became an assistant at the court pharmacy. He went to Göttingen to study pharmacy from 1780 and from 1783 he began to make a journey on foot to St. Petersburg and returned to work at the court pharmacy in 1784. He conducted experiments in chemistry and in 1785 he developed methods to produce pure tartaric acid using charcoal. He examined the use of charcoal for purification of water. He supported the

phlogiston theory The phlogiston theory, a superseded scientific theory, postulated the existence of a fire-like element dubbed phlogiston () contained within combustible bodies and released during combustion. The name comes from the Ancient Greek (''burnin ...

. He examined crystallization from supersaturated and supercooled solutions, noting the application of seed crystals. In 1787 he replaced

Mikhail Lomonosov Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (; , ; – ) was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries were the atmosphere of Venus and the law of conservation of ...

at the Imperial Academy of Sciences and in 1793 he became professor of chemistry. Lowitz described halos or arcs around the sun which are tangential to the 22° halo and curve outwards on either side of it. These have been terms as Lowitz arcs, the optical mechanics of its formation are debated.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lowitz, Johann Tobias 1757 births 1804 deaths Scientists from Göttingen Chemists from the Russian Empire 18th-century German chemists Emigrants from the Holy Roman Empire Immigrants to the Russian Empire