Otto von Guericke

Otto von Guericke (Magdeburg, November 20, 1602 – Hamburg, May 11, 1686), was a German physicist and jurist, famous for his studies on atmospheric pressure, electrostatics, and physics. of the void.

Biography

He was born into an important family in the city of Magdeburg. He studied law at the universities of Leipzig and Jena. He then devoted himself to mathematical studies at the University of Leyden and in 1626 he married, also acting as a member of the Magdeburg city council.

During the Thirty Years' War, Guericke managed to escape the city with his family before it was destroyed and sacked by Holy Roman Catholic troops on May 20, 1631. Upon his return the following year, he was elected mayor of the destroyed city, which out of 20,000 inhabitants only reached 5,000, dedicated to its reconstruction. (see also: Sack of Magdeburg)

After retiring as mayor, from 1646 he served as judge in the city of Magdeburg, a role he held for thirty years. Apart from his career as a lawyer, his passion was physics.

He studied Blaise Pascal's and Evangelista Torricelli's treatises on atmospheric pressure. In 1654, Von Guericke made a spectacular demonstration of the immense force that the atmosphere could exert. He showed that when two perfectly fitted copper hemispheres 50 centimeters in diameter were joined so as to form a sphere and a vacuum was established inside after extracting atmospheric air, two trains of eight horses (in total 16 horses) each one could not separate them. This experiment became famous in Europe under the name of & # 34; the Magdeburg hemispheres & # 34;, which he tested before the Imperial Diet of Regensburg to explain the effects of atmospheric pressure.

In another experiment more immediately related to the history of the steam engine, he showed that, when a partial vacuum was created under a large piston inserted in a cylinder, the combined force of fifty men could not prevent the atmospheric pressure bring the plunger to the bottom of the cylinder.

He also dabbled in research on electrostatics. He observed that a repulsion was produced between electrified bodies after having been attracted. He devised the first electrostatic machine and drew sparks from a balloon made of sulfur, which led him to speculate about the electrical nature of lightning.

In astronomy he was one of the first scholars to state that the return of comets can be predicted by considering the presence of their orbit through mathematical calculations.

In 1672 he published his work Experimenta nova, ut vocatur Magdeburgica, de vacuo spatio, where he described his famous experiment with the Magdeburg hemispheres. He died in Hamburg in 1686.

Eponymy

• The lunar crater Guericke carries this name in his memory.

Fonts

• Breve biography in German
• Extensive pages on the Guericke Year in Magdeburg
• The "hemispheries", website of the Deutsches Museum