Kōnig, Arthur

(b. Krefeld, Germany, 13 September 1856; d. Berlin, Germany, 26 October 1901)

physics.

König, one of Helmholtz’s most prominent students was a leading representative of physiological optics. The son of a teacher, he attended the Realgymnasium in Krefeld; after graduating in 1874, he became a merchant. In 1878 he began scientific studies at the universities of Bonn, Heidelberg, and Berlin. He became an assistant to Helmholtz in 1882 at the physics institute of the University of Berlin, where he earned his doctorate in 1882 and qualified for lecturing in physics in 1884. In 1889 he became a full professor and head of the University of Berlin. König devoted himself entirely to physiological optics, especially to psychophysics and the physiology of the sense organs. In 1891, with H. Ebbinghaus, he founded his own journal covering these fields.

An excellent experimenter, König improved the Helmhltz leukoscope and constructed a spectrophotometer. He worked on the theory of colors and was a zealous defender of the Young-Helmholtz theory of color perception. He investigated the blending of colors, the brightness distribution of colors in the spectrum, and the significance of visual purple in sight. König also developed new data in his studies on visual acuity and color blidness. For example, he demonstrated that those who are totally color-blind have no visual perceptions in the center of the retina and hence are blind there. By using the Young-Helmholtz color theory, with its basic perceptions f red, green, and blue, König showed that in cases where one of these basic perceptions is lacking, the color confusions of red-blind and green-blind persons can be explained in terms of the normal trichromatic color system. With Conrad Dieterici, König investigated the structure of this abnormal, dichromatic color system (blue-yellow or red-green blindness).

Along with his works on physiological optics, König conducted psychophysical studies, particularly on Weber’s law. He also considered other experimental and theooetical questions in physics. In the first years of his scientific activity he worked on galvanic polarization, developed a new method of determining the modulus of elasticity, and, with Franz Richarz, made a new determination of the gravitational constants. After the death of Helmholtz, König became coeditor of his manuscripts and supervised the second edition of his Handbuch der physiologischen Optik.

König was also very active in the editing of periodicals. Beginning in 1889 he was the sole editor of the Verhandlungen der Deutschen physikalischen Gesellschaft of Berlin, and from 1891 to 1901 he edited the Ältern Beiträge, later called Beiträge zur Physiologie der Sinnesorgane. With H. Ebbinghaus he edited Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane (from 1830).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Bibliographies can be found in Poggendorff, III, 735, and IV, 777; and A. Harnack, Geschichte der Königlichen Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, III (Berlin, 1900), 154 (König’s academic papers). König wrote about 40 scientific papers, including “Ueber die Beziehungen zwischen der galvanischen Polarisation und der Oberflächenspannung des Quecksilbers,” in Annalen der Physik und Chemie, n.s. 16 (1882), 1-38, his doctoral dissertation; “Das Leukoskop und einige mit demselben gemachten Beobachtungen,” ibid., 17 (1882), 990-1008; “Zur Kenntniss dichromatischer Farbsysteme,” ibid., 22 (1884), 567-578; “Ueber die Empfindlichkeit des normalen Auges für Wellenlängen-unterschiede des Lichts,” ibid.,579-589, written with C. Dieterici ; “Eine neue Methode zur Bestimmung der Gravitationsconstante,”ibid., 24 (1885), 664-668, written with F. Richarz; “Modern Development of Thomas Young’s Theory of Colour-Vision,” in Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1886); “Experimentelle Untersuchungen über die psychophysische Fundamentalformel in Bezug auf den Gesichtssinn,” in Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1888), 2 , 917-931, and (1889), 2 , 641-644, written with E. Brodhun; “Die Grundempfindungen in normalen und anormalen Farbsystemen und ihre Intensitäts-Vertheilung im Spectrum,” in Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 4 (1893), 241-347, written with C. Dieterici (first results published in Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin [1886], 2 , 805-829); “Über den menschlichen Sehpurpur und seine Bedeutung für das Sehen,” ibid, (1894), 2 , 577-598; and “Über ‘Blaublindheit,’” ibid. (1897), 2 , 718-731.

II. Secondary Literature. See H. Ebbinghaus, “Arthur König,” in zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 27 (1901), 145-147; W. Uhthoff, “Arthur König,” in Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde, 39 (1901), 950-953; and the unsigned “Arthur König,” in Leopoldina, no. 37 (1901) 109-110.

Hans-GÜnther KÖrber