Quincke, Georg Hermann
QUINCKE, GEORG HERMANN
(b. Frankfurt-an-der-Oder, Germany, 19 November 1834; d. Heidelberg, Germany, 13 January 1924)
physics.
Quincke’s father was a physician; his mother, Marie Gabain, came from a Huguenot family. In 1843 the family moved to Berlin, where the father was promoted to a medical council. After graduating from the Werder Gymnasium, Quincke began to study physics at the University of Berlin at the age of eighteen. He continued his studies at Konigsberg under Franz Neumann and then under Gustav Kirchhoff at Heidelberg. At the same time Quincke worked in the laboratory of Robert Bunsen. He then returned to Berlin, where he received his doctorate in 1858 with a dissertation on the capillary constant of mercury. Only a year later he obtained the venia legendi, for which he did not have to fulfill the usual requirement of presenting special Habilitationsschrift. He began teaching physics in 1859 at the Berlin Gewerbe-akademie (the predecessor of the Technische Hoch-schule), and in 1865 he became extraordinary professor at the University of Berlin.
In 1872 Quincke was appointed full professor at the University of Würzburg, and in 1875 he succeeded Kirchhoff at Heidelberg. Following his retirement at the age of seventy-three, Quincke worked in his private laboratory at his country house.
During his lifetime Quincke was held in high regard by his peers, especially in England, where his friends included William Thomson, J. W. Strutt, Stokes, Tyndall, and Tait. He was a member of the academies of Göttingen, Berlin, Munich, Uppsala, and Halle and of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh. He also received honorary doctorates from the universities of Würzburg, Heidelberg, Oxford, Cambridge, and Glasgow.
Quincke’s views on physics were rooted in the thought of the first half of the nineteenth century. He admired Faraday’s method of working and ideas, but he never understood Maxwell’s elaboration and mathematical reformulation of Faraday’s discoveries. In 1859 Quincke discovered Faraday’s discoveries. In 1859 Quincke discovered the so-called diaphragm currents. Above all, however, he was passionately interested in making measurements; and the bulk of his work consisted of the determination and collection of data concerning the properties and constants of materials. He frequently returned to capillarity, the subject of his doctoral dissertation. He found countless opportunities for research in extending the capillary-tube and angle-of-contact methods of measuring from simple liquids to solutions and fusions and in measuring interfacial tension between two liquids.
Quincke devoted a group of sixteen studies to problems in optics, basing his work on theories that viewed light as elastic vibrations in a mechanical medium. Between 1880 and 1897 he published the fifteen installments of his “Elektrische Untersuchungen” dealing with the behavior of materials in electrostatic and magnetic fields. In this connection Quincke developed his elegant meniscus-displacement method of determining diamagnetic and paramagnetic susceptibilities of liquids and gases. During the final years of his life he was concerned primarily with foams and their structures.
Quincke introduced the first practical laboratory work to be given in a physics course at a German university. The restricted means at his disposal obliged him to get along with little, and the students spoke jokingly of “Quincke’s Cork-wax-penny System.” But he took pride in this.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Original Works. Quincke’s writings were published only in periodicals; the most important (until 1900) appeared in Annalen der Physik und Chemie. For a list of his memoirs “irs, see Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, 64–65; VIII, 681–682; XI, 86; and XVIII, 8-which lists more than 90 works published to 1900—and Poggendorff. IV, 1203–1204; V, 1015; and VI, 2101–2102, for later writings.
Quincke’s memoirs on capillarity include “Ueber die Capilläritatscostanaten des Quecksilbers,” in Atmalen flfer Physik, 4th ser., 105 (1858), 1–48; “Ueber die Capillaritats-constanten fester Korper,” ibid., 5th ser., 134 (1868), 356–367; “Ueber die Capillaritätsconstanten geschmolzener Kbrper,’ ibid., 135 (1868), 621–646; “Ueber die Ent-fernung, in welcher die Molecularkraäfte der Capiltarität noch wirksam sind,” ibid., 137 (1869), 402–414; “Ueber die Capillaritätsconstanten geschmolener chemischer Ver-bindungen,” ibid., 138 (1869), 141–155; and “Ueber Capillaritats-Erscheinungen an der gemeinschaftlichen Oberfläche von Flüssigkeiten”, ibid., 139 (1870), 1–89.
For his optical studies, see Annalen for 1862–1873; research on electricity was published in 1880–1897. See also “Eine physikalische Werkstätte,” in Zeitschrift für den physikalischcn und chemischen Unterricht, 5 (1892), 113— 118; and 7 (1894), 57–72.
II. Secondary Literature. On Quincke and his work, see F. Braun, “Hermann G. Quincke zum 70. Geburtstag,” in Annalen der Physik, 4th ser., 15 (1904), i-iv, with portrait; and E. H. Stevens, “The Heidelberg Physical Laboratory,” in Nature, 65 (1902), 587. Obituaries include A. Kalahne, in Physikalische Zeitschrift, 25 (1924), 649–659, with portrait; W. Konig, in Naturwisscnschaften,12 (1924), 621–627, with portrait; and A. Schuster and G. E. Allen, in Nature, 113 (1924), 280–281.
F. Fraunberger