Julius Ferdinand Ruska (9 February 1867 in Bühl, Baden – 11 February 1949 in

Schramberg Schramberg is a town in the district of Rottweil, in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated in the eastern Black Forest, 25 km northwest of Rottweil. With all of its districts (Talstadt, Sulgen, Waldmössingen, Heiligenbronn, Schönbron ...

) was a German orientalist,

historian of science The history of science covers the development of science from ancient history, ancient times to the present. It encompasses all three major branches of science: natural science, natural, social science, social, and formal science, formal. Pr ...

and educator. He was a critical scholar of

alchemical Alchemy (from the Arabic word , ) is an ancient branch of natural philosophy, a philosophical and protoscientific tradition that was historically practised in China, India, the Muslim world, and Europe. In its Western form, alchemy is first ...

literature, and of

Islamic science Science in the medieval Islamic world was the science developed and practised during the Islamic Golden Age under the Abbasid Caliphate of Baghdad, the Umayyads of Córdoba, the Abbadids of Seville, the Samanids, the Ziyarids and the Buyi ...

, raising many issues on attributions and sources of the texts, and providing translations. The range of his studies was wide, including the ''

Emerald Tablet The Emerald Tablet, also known as the Smaragdine Table or the ''Tabula Smaragdina'', is a compact and cryptic text traditionally attributed to the legendary Hellenistic period, Hellenistic figure Hermes Trismegistus. The earliest known version ...

'', a basic hermetic text. From 1924 he headed an institute in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...

, where he has been a student. Of his seven children,

Ernst Ruska Ernst August Friedrich Ruska (; 25 December 1906 – 27 May 1988) was a German physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986 for his work in electron optics, including the design of the first electron microscope. Life and career Ernst R ...

and

Helmut Ruska Helmut Ruska (June 7, 1908, in Heidelberg – August 30, 1973) was a German physician and biologist from Heidelberg. After earning his medical degree, he spent several years working as a physician at hospitals in Heidelberg and Berlin. During this ...

were distinguished in their fields.

Books

Sources

* *

External links

*
Comprehensive biographical and bibliographical site
1867 births 1949 deaths People from Bühl (Baden) People from the Grand Duchy of Baden German scholars German historians of science German orientalists German male non-fiction writers Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin {{Germany-academic-bio-stub