Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph(1742–1799)
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, the German satirist, scientist, and philosopher, studied mathematics and science at the University of Göttingen and was a professor there from 1767 to the end of his life. On two occasions Lichtenberg visited England. His impressions from these visits are recorded in his diaries and letters.
Lichtenberg's original contributions to mathematics and to pure and experimental science are not of great importance. The Lichtenberg figure in the theory of electricity was named after him. He was very successful as a teacher; among his pupils were Alexander von Humboldt and Christian Gauss. It has been said that his fame as a lecturer and demonstrator surpassed that of any other German scientist of his time.
His literary reputation with his contemporaries rested mainly on his satirical criticism of the writers of the Sturm und Drang movement and of the Swiss clergyman Johann Lavater's quasi-scientific psychology of character. Lichtenberg's own favorites and models in art were Englishmen: William Shakespeare; David Garrick, the actor; and William Hogarth, the painter. His analyses and descriptions of Garrick on the stage and his detailed "explanations" of Hogarth's etchings have become famous. Most of Lichtenberg's literary output during his lifetime appeared in two periodicals, of which he was the editor, the Göttinger Taschen-Calender and the Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur.
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