Address delivered in the Leibnitz meeting of
the Academy of Sciences on July 6, 1871.

The honourable duty has fallen on me of expressing in the name of this Academy what it has lost in Gustav Magnus, who belonged to it for thirty years. As a grateful pupil, as a friend, and finally as his successor, it was a pleasure to me as well as a duty to fulfil such a task. But I find the best part of my work already done by our colleague Hofmann at the request of the German Chemical Society, of which he is the President. He has solved the difficulty of giving a picture of the life and work of Magnus in the most complete and most charming manner. He has not only anticipated me, but he stood in much closer and more intimate personal relation to Magnus than I did; and, on the other hand, he is much better qualified than I to pronounce a competent judgment on the principal side of Magnus’s activity, namely, the chemical.

Hence what remains for me to do is greatly restricted. I shall scarcely venture to speak as the biographer of Magnus, but only of what he was to us and to science, to represent which is our allotted task.

His life was not indeed rich in external events and changes; it was the peaceful life of a man who, free from the cares of outer circumstances, first as member, then as leader of an esteemed, gifted, and amiable family, sought and found abundant satisfaction in scientific work, in the utilisation of scientific results for the instruction and advantage of mankind. Heinrich Gustav Magnus was born in Berlin on May 2, 1802, the fourth of six brothers, who by their talents have distinguished themselves in various directions. The father, Johann Matthias, was chief of a wealthy commercial house, whose first concern was to secure to his children a free development of their individual capacity and inclinations. Our departed friend showed very early a greater inclination for the study of mathematics and natural philosophy than for that of languages. His father arranged his instruction accordingly, by removing him from the Werder Gymnasium and sending him to the Cauer Private Institute, in which more attention was paid to scientific subjects.

From 1822 to 1827 Magnus devoted himself entirely to the study of natural science at the University of Berlin. Before carrying out his original intention of qualifying as a professor of technology, he spent two years with that object in travelling; he remained with Berzelius a long time in Stockholm, then with Dulong, Thénard and Gay-Lussac in Paris. Unusually well prepared by these means, he qualified in the University of this place in technology, and afterwards also in physics; he was appointed extraordinary professor in 1834, and ordinary professor in 1845, and so distinguished himself by his scientific labours at this time, that nine years after his habilitation, on January 27, 1840, he was elected a member of this Academy. From 1832 until 1840 he taught physics in the Artillery and Engineering School; and from 1850 until 1856 chemical technology in the Gewerbe Institut. For a long time he gave the lectures in his own house, using his own instruments, which gradually developed into the most splendid physical collection in existence at that time, and which the State afterwards purchased for the University. His lectures were afterwards given in the University, and he only retained the laboratory in his own house for his own private work and for that of his pupils.

His life was passed thus in quiet but unremitting activity; travels, sometimes for scientific or technical studies, sometimes also in the service of the State, and occasionally for recreation, interrupted his work here from time to time. His experience and knowledge of business were often in demand by the State on various commissions; among these may be especially mentioned the part he took in the chemical deliberations of the Agricultural Board (Landes-Economie Collegium), to which he devoted much of his time; above all to the great practical questions of agricultural chemistry.

After sixty-seven years of almost undisturbed health he was overtaken by a painful illness towards the end of the year 1869.⁠[1] He still continued his lectures on physics until February 25, 1870, but during March he was scarcely able to leave his bed, and he died on April 4.

Magnus’s was a richly endowed nature, which under happy external circumstances could develop in its own peculiar manner, and was free to choose its activity according to its own mind. But this mind was so governed by reason, and so filled, I might almost say, with artistic harmony, which shunned the immoderate and impure, that he knew how to choose the object of his work wisely, and on this account almost always to attain it. Thus the direction and manner of Magnus’s activity accorded so perfectly with his intellectual nature as is the case only with the happy few among mortals. The harmonious tendency and cultivation of his mind could be recognised in the natural grace of his behaviour, in the cheerfulness and firmness of his disposition, in the warm amiability of his intercourse with others. There was in all this, much more than the mere acquisition of the outer forms of politeness can ever reach, where they are not illuminated by a warm sympathy and by a fine feeling for the beautiful.

Accustomed from an early age to the regulated and prudent activity of the commercial house in which he grew up, he retained that skill in business which he had so frequently to exercise in the administration of the affairs of this Academy, of the philosophical faculty, and of the various Government commissions. He retained from thence the love of order, the tendency towards the actual, and towards what is practically attainable, even although the chief aim of his activity was an ideal one. He understood that the pleasant enjoyment of an existence free from care, and intercourse with the most amiable circle of relatives and friends, do not bring a lasting satisfaction; but work only, and unselfish work for an ideal aim. Thus he laboured, not for the increase of riches, but for science; not as a dilettante and capriciously, but according to a fixed aim and indefatigably; not in vanity, catching at striking discoveries, which might at once have made his name celebrated. He was, on the contrary, a master of faithful, patient, and modest work, who tests that work again and again, and never ceases until he knows there is nothing left to be improved. But it is also such work, which by the classical perfection of its methods, by the accuracy and certainty of its results, merits and gains the best and most enduring fame. There are among the labours of Magnus masterpieces of finished perfection, especially those on the expansion of gases by heat, and on the tension of vapours. Another master in this field, and one of the most experienced and distinguished, namely, Regnault of Paris, worked at these subjects at the same time with Magnus, but without knowing of his researches. The results of both investigators were made public almost simultaneously, and showed by their extraordinarily close agreement with what fidelity and with what skill both had laboured. But where differences showed themselves, they were eventually decided in favour of Magnus.

The unselfishness with which Magnus held to the ideal aim of his efforts is shown in quite a characteristic manner, in the way in which he attracted younger men to scientific work, and as soon as he believed he had discovered in them zeal and talent for such work by placing at their disposal his apparatus, and the appliances of his private laboratory. This was the way in which I was brought in close relation to him, when I found myself in Berlin for the purpose of passing the Government medical examination.

He invited me at that time (I myself would not have ventured to propose it) to extend my experiments on fermentation and putrefaction in new directions, and to apply other methods, which required greater means than a young army surgeon living on his pay could provide himself with. At that time I worked with him almost daily for about three months, and thus gained a deep and lasting impression of his goodness, his unselfishness, and his perfect freedom from scientific jealousy.

By such a course he not only surrendered the external advantages which the possession of one of the richest collections of instruments would have secured an ambitious man against competitors, but he also bore with perfect composure the little troubles and vexations involved in the want of skill and the hastiness with which young experimentalists are apt to handle costly instruments. Still less could it be said that, after the manner of the learned in other countries, he utilised the work of the pupils for his own objects, and for the glorification of his own name. At that time chemical laboratories were being established according to Liebig’s precedent: of physical laboratories—which, it may be observed, are much more difficult to organise—not one existed at that time to my knowledge. In fact, their institution is due to Magnus.

In such circumstances we see an essential part of the inner tendency of the man, which must not be neglected in estimating his value: he was not only an investigator, he was also a teacher of science in the highest and widest sense of the word. He did not wish science to be confined to the study and lecture-room, he desired that it should find its way into all conditions of life. In his active interest for technology, in his zealous participation in the work of the Agricultural Board, this phase of his efforts was plainly reflected, as well as in the great trouble he took in the preparation of experiments, and in the ingenious contrivance of the apparatus required for them.

His collection of instruments, which subsequently passed into the possession of the University, and is at present used by me as his successor, is the most eloquent testimony of this. Everything is in the most perfect order: if a silk-thread, a glass tube, or a cork, are required for an experiment, one may safely depend on finding them near the instrument. All the apparatus which he contrived is made with the best means at his disposal, without sparing either material, or the labour of the workman, so as to ensure the success of the experiment, and by making it on a sufficiently large scale to render it visible as far off as possible. I recollect very well with what wonder and admiration we students saw him experiment, not merely because all the experiments were successful and brilliant, but because they scarcely seemed to occupy or to disturb his thoughts. The easy and clear flow of his discourse went on without interruption; each experiment came in its right place, was performed quickly, without haste or hesitation, and was then put aside.

I have already mentioned that the valuable collection of apparatus came into the possession of the University during his lifetime. He specially wished that what he had collected and constructed as appliances in his scientific work should not be scattered and estranged from the original purpose to which he had devoted his life. With this feeling he bequeathed to the University the rest of the apparatus of his laboratory, as well as his very rich and valuable library, and he thus laid the foundation for the further development of a Public Physical Institute.

It is sufficient in these few touches to have recalled the mental individuality of our departed friend, so far as the sources of the direction of his activity are to be found.

Personal recollections will furnish a livelier image to all those of you who have worked with him for the last thirty years.

If we now proceed to discuss the results of his researches it will not be sufficient to read through and to estimate his academical writings. I have already shown that a prominent part of his activity was directed to his fellow-creatures. To this must be added, that he lived in an age when natural science passed through a process of development, with a rapidity such as never occurred before in the history of science. But the men who belonged to such a time, and co-operated in this development are apt to appear in wrong perspective to their successors, since the best part of their work seems to the latter self-evident, and scarcely worthy of mention.

It is difficult for us to realise the condition of natural science as it existed in Germany, at least in the first twenty years of this century. Magnus was born in 1802; I myself nineteen years later; but when I go back to my earliest recollections, when I began to study physics out of the school-books in my father’s possession, who was himself taught in the Cauer Institute, I still see before me the dark image of a series of ideas which seems now like the alchemy of the middle ages. Of Lavoisier’s and of Humphry Davy’s revolutionising discoveries, not much had got into the school-books. Although oxygen was already known, yet phlogiston, the fire element, played also its part. Chlorine was still oxygenated hydrochloric acid; potash and lime were still elements. Invertebrate animals were divided into insects and reptiles; and in botany we still counted stamens.

It is strange to see how late and with what hesitation Germans applied themselves to the study of natural science in this century, whilst they had taken so prominent a part in its earlier development. I need only name Copernicus, Kepler, Leibnitz, and Stahl.

For we may indeed boast of our eager, fearless and unselfish love of truth, which flinches before no authority, and is stopped by no pretence; shuns no sacrifice and no labour, and is very modest in its claims on worldly success. But even on this account she ever impels us first of all to pursue the questions of principle to their ultimate sources, and to trouble ourselves but little about what has no connection with fundamental principles, and especially about practical consequences and about useful applications. To this must be added another reason, namely, that the independent mental development of the last three hundred years, began under political conditions which caused the chief weight to fall on theological studies. Germany has liberated Europe from the tyranny of the ancient church; but she has also paid a much dearer price for this freedom than other nations. After the religious wars, she remained devastated, impoverished, politically shattered, her boundaries spoiled, and arrogantly handed over defenceless to her neighbours. To deduce consequences from the new moral views, to prove them scientifically, to work them out in all regions of intellectual life, for all this there was no time during the storm of war; each man had to hold to his own party, every incipient change of opinion was looked upon as treachery, and excited bitter wrath. Owing to the Reformation, intellectual life had lost its old stability and cohesion; everything appeared in a new light, and new questions arose. The German mind could not be quieted with outward uniformity; when it was not convinced and satisfied, it did not allow its doubt to remain silent. Thus it was theology, and next to it classical philology and philosophy, which, partly as scientific aids of theology, partly for what they could do for the solution of the new moral, æsthetical, and metaphysical problems, laid claim almost exclusively to the interest of scientific culture. Hence it is clear why the Protestant nations, as well as that part of the Catholics which, wavering in its old faith, only remained outwardly in connection with its church, threw itself with such zeal on philosophy. Ethical and metaphysical problems were chiefly to be solved; the sources of knowledge had to be critically examined, and this was done with deeper earnestness than formerly. I need not enumerate the actual results which the last century gained by this work. It excited soaring hopes, and it cannot be denied that metaphysics has a dangerous attraction for the German mind; it could not again abandon it until all its hiding-places had been searched through and it had satisfied itself that for the present nothing more is to be found there.

Then, in the second half of the last century, the rejuvenescent intellectual life of the nation began to cultivate its artistic flowers; the clumsy language transformed itself into one of the most expressive instruments of the human mind; out of what was still the hard, poor, and wearisome condition of civil and political life, the results of the religious war, in which the figure of the Prussian hero-king only now cast the first hope of a better future, to be again followed by the misery of the Napoleonic war,—out of this joyless existence, all sensitive minds gladly fled into the flowery land opened out by German poetry, rivalling as it did the best poetry of all times and of all peoples; or in the sublime aspects of philosophy they endeavoured to sink reality in oblivion.

And the natural sciences were on the side of this real world, so willingly overlooked. Astronomy alone could at that time offer great and sublime prospects; in all other branches long and patient labour was still necessary before great principles could be attained; before these subjects could have a voice in the great questions of human life; or before they became the powerful means of the authority of man over the forces of nature which they have since become. The labour of the natural philosopher seems narrow, low, and insignificant compared with the great conceptions of the philosopher and of the poet; it was only those natural philosophers who, like Oken, rejoiced in poetical philosophical conceptions, who found willing auditors.

Far be it from me as a one-sided advocate of scientific interests to blame this period of enthusiastic excitement; we have, in fact, to thank it for the moral force which broke the Napoleonic yoke; we have to thank it for the grand poetry which is the noblest treasure of our nation; but the real world retains its right against every semblance, even against the most beautiful; and individuals, as well as nations, who wish to rise to the ripeness of manhood must learn to look reality in the face, in order to bend it to the purpose of the mind. To flee into an ideal world is a false resource of transient success; it only facilitates the play of the adversary; and when knowledge only reflects itself, it becomes unsubstantial and empty, or resolves itself into illusions and phrases.

Against the errors of a mental tendency, which corresponded at first to the natural soaring of a fresh youthful ambition, but which afterwards, in the age of the Epigones of the Romantic school and of the philosophy of Identity, fell into sentimental straining after sublimity and inspiration, a reaction took place, and was carried out not merely in the regions of science, but also in history, in art, and in philology. In the last departments, too, where we deal directly with products of activity of the human mind, and where, therefore, a construction à priori from the psychological laws seems much more possible than in nature, it has come to be understood that we must first know the facts, before we can establish their laws.

Gustav Magnus’s development happened during the period of this struggle; it lay in the whole tendency of his mind, that he whose gentle spirit usually endeavoured to reconcile antagonisms, took a decided part in favour of pure experience as against speculation. If he forbore to wound people, it must be confessed that he did not relax one iota of the principle which, with sure instinct, he had recognised as the true one; and in the most influential quarters he fought in a twofold sense; on the one hand, because in physics it was a question as to the foundations of the whole of natural sciences; and on the other hand, because the University of Berlin, with its numerous students, had long been the stronghold of speculation. He continually preached to his pupils that no reasoning, however plausible it might seem, avails against actual fact, and that observation and experiment must decide; and he was always anxious that every practicable experiment should be made which could give practical confirmation or refutation of an assumed law. He did not limit in any way the applicability of scientific methods in the investigation of inanimate nature, but in his research on the gases of the blood (1837) he dealt a blow at the heart of vitalistic theories. He led physics to the centre of organic change, by laying a scientific foundation for a correct theory of respiration; a foundation upon which a great number of more recent investigators have built, and which has developed into one of the most important chapters of physiology.

He cannot be reproached with having had too little confidence in carrying out his principle; but I must confess that I myself and many of my companions formerly thought that Magnus carried his distrust of speculation too far, especially in relation to mathematical physics. He had probably never dipped very deep in the latter subject, and that strengthened our doubts. Yet when we look around us from the standpoint which science has now attained, it must be confessed that his distrust of the mathematical physics of that date was not unfounded. At that time no separation had been distinctly made as to what was empirical matter of fact, what mere verbal definition, and what only hypothesis. The vague mixture of these elements which formed the basis of calculation was put forth as axioms of metaphysical necessity, and postulated a similar kind of necessity for the results. I need only recall to you the great part which hypotheses as to the atomic structure of bodies played in mathematical physics during the first half of this century, whilst as good as nothing was known of atoms; and, for instance, hardly anything was known of the extraordinary influence which heat has on molecular forces. We now know that the expansive force of gases depends on motion due to heat; at that period most physicists regarded heat as imponderable matter.

In reference to atoms in molecular physics, Sir W. Thomson says, with much weight, that their assumption can explain no property of the body which has not previously been attributed to the atoms. Whilst assenting to this opinion, I would in no way express myself against the existence of atoms, but only against the endeavour to deduce the principles of theoretical physics from purely hypothetical assumptions as to the atomic structure of bodies. We now know that many of these hypotheses, which found favour in their day, far overshot the mark. Mathematical physics has acquired an entirely different character under the hands of Gauss, of F. E. Neumann and their pupils, among the Germans; as well as from those mathematicians who in England followed Faraday’s lead, Stokes, W. Thomson, and Clerk-Maxwell. It is now understood that mathematical physics is a purely experimental science; that it has no other principles to follow than those of experimental physics. In our immediate experience we find bodies variously formed and constituted; only with such can we make our observations and experiments. Their actions are made up of the actions which each of their parts contributes to the sum of the whole; and hence, if we wish to know the simplest and most general law of the action of masses and substances found in nature upon one another, and if we wish to divest these laws of the accidents of form, magnitude, and position of the bodies concerned, we must go back to the laws of action of the smallest particles, or, as mathematicians designate it, the elementary volume. But these are not, like the atoms, disparate and heterogeneous, but continuous and homogeneous.

The characteristic properties of the elementary volumes of different bodies are to be found experimentally, either directly, where the knowledge of the sum is sufficient to discover the constituents, or hypothetically, where the calculated sum of effects in the greatest possible number of different cases must be compared with actual fact by observation and by experiment. It is thus admitted that mathematical physics only investigates the laws of action of the elements of a body independently of the accidents of form, in a purely empirical manner, and is therefore just as much under the control of experience as what are called experimental physics. In principle they are not at all different, and the former only continues the function of the latter, in order to arrive at still simpler and still more general laws of phenomena.

It cannot be doubted that this analytical tendency of physical inquiry has assumed another character; that it has just cast off that which was the means of placing Magnus towards it in some degree of antagonism. He tried to maintain, at least in former years, that the business of the mathematical and that of the experimental physicist are quite distinct from one another; that a young man who wishes to pursue physics would have to decide between the two. It appears to me, on the contrary, that the conviction is constantly gaining ground, that in the present more advanced state of science those only can experimentalise profitably who have a clear-sighted knowledge of theory, and know how to propound and pursue the right questions; and, on the other hand, only those can theorise with advantage who have great practice in experiments. The discovery of spectrum analysis is the most brilliant example within our recollection of such an interpenetration of theoretical knowledge and experimental skill.

I am not aware whether Magnus subsequently expressed other views as to the relation of experimental and mathematical physics. In any case, those who regard his former desertion of mathematical physics as a reaction against the misuse of speculation carried too far, must also admit that in the older mathematical physics there are many reasons for this dislike, and that, on the other hand, he received with the greatest pleasure the results which Kirchhoff, Sir W. Thomson, and others had developed out of new facts from theoretical starting-points. I may here be permitted to adduce my own experience. My researches were mostly developed in a manner against which Magnus tried to guard; yet I never found in him any but the most willing and friendly recognition.

It is, however, natural that every one, relying upon his own experience, should recommend to others, as most beneficial, the way which best suits his own nature, and by which he has made the quickest progress. And if we are all of the same opinion that the task of science is to find the Laws of Facts, then each one may be left free either to plunge into facts, and to search where he might come upon traces of laws still unknown, or from laws already known to search out the points where new facts are to be discovered. But just as we all, like Magnus, are opposed to the theorist who holds it unnecessary to prove experimentally the hypothetical results which seem axioms to him, so would Magnus—as his works decidedly show—pronounce with us against that kind of excessive empiricism which sets out to discover facts which fit to no rule, and which also try carefully to avoid a law, or a possible connection between newly discovered facts.

It must here be mentioned that Faraday, another great physicist, worked in England exactly in the same direction, and with the same object; to whom, on that account, Magnus was bound by the heartiest sympathy. With Faraday, the antagonism to the physical theories hitherto held, which treated of atoms and forces acting at a distance, was even more pronounced than with Magnus.

We must, moreover, admit that Magnus mostly worked with success on problems which seemed specially adapted to mathematical treatment; as, for instance, his research on the deviation of rotating shot fired from rifled guns; also his paper on the form of jets of water and their resolution into drops. In the first, he proved, by a very cleverly arranged experiment, how the resistance of the air, acting on the ball from below, must deflect it sideways as a rotating body, in a direction depending on that of the rotation; and how, in consequence of this, the trajectory is deflected in the same direction. In the second treatise, he investigated the different forms of jets of water, how they are partly changed by the form of the aperture through which they flow, partly in consequence of the manner in which they flow to it; and how their resolution into drops is caused by external agitation. He applied the principle of the stroboscopic disk in observing the phenomena, by looking at the jet through small slits in a rotating disk. He grouped the various phenomena with peculiar tact, so that those among them which are alike were easily seen, and one elucidated the other. And if a final mechanical explanation is not always attained, yet the reason for a great number of characteristic features of the individual phenomena is plain. In this respect many of his researches—I might specially commend those on the efflux of jets of water—are excellent models of what Goethe theoretically advanced, and in his physical labours endeavoured to accomplish, though with only partial success.

But even where Magnus from his standpoint, and armed with the knowledge of his time, exerted himself in vain to seize the kernel of the solution of a difficult question, a host of new and valuable facts is always brought to light. Thus in his research on the thermo-electric battery, where he correctly saw that a critical question was to be solved, and at the conclusion declared: ‘When I commenced the experiment just described, I confidently hoped to find that thermo-electrical currents are due to a motion of heat.’ In this sense he investigated the cases in which the thermo-electrical circuit consisted of a single metal in which there were alternately hard portions, and such as had been softened by heat; or those it which the parts in contact had very different temperatures. He was convinced that the thermo-electrical current was due neither to the radiating power, nor to the conductivity for heat, using this expression in its ordinary meaning, and he had to content himself with the obviously imperfect explanation that two pieces of the same metal at different temperatures acted like dissimilar conductors, which like liquids do not fall in with the potential series. The solution was first furnished by the two general laws of the mechanical theory of heat. Magnus’s hope was not unfulfilled. Sir W. Thomson discovered that alterations in the conductivity for heat, though such as were produced by the electrical current itself, were indeed the sources of the current.

It is the nature of the scientific direction which Magnus pursued in his researches, that they build many a stone into the great fabric of science, which give it an ever broader support, and an ever growing height, without its appearing to a fresh observer as a special and distinctive work due to the sole exertion of any one scientific man. If we wish to explain the importance of each stone for its special place, how difficult to procure it, and how skilfully it was worked, we must presuppose either that the hearer knows the entire history of the building, or we must explain it to him, by which more time is lost than I can now claim.

Thus it is with Magnus’s researches. Wherever he has attacked, he has brought out a host of new and often remarkable facts; he has carefully and accurately observed them, and he has brought them in connection with the great fabric of science. He has, moreover, bequeathed to science a great number of ingenious and carefully devised new methods, as instruments with which future generations will continue to discover hidden veins of the noble metal of everlasting laws in the apparently waste and wild chaos of accident. Magnus’s name will always be mentioned in the first line of those on whose labours the proud edifice of the science of Nature reposes; of the science which has so thoroughly remodelled the life of modern humanity by its intellectual influence, as well as by its having subjugated the forces of nature to the dominion of the mind.

I have only spoken of Magnus’s physical labours, and have only mentioned those which seemed to me characteristic for his individuality. But the number of his researches is very great, and they extend over wider regions than could now be grasped by any single inquirer. He began as a chemist, but even then he inclined to those cases which showed remarkable physical conditions; he was afterwards exclusively a physicist. But parallel with this he cultivated a very extended study of technology, which of itself would alone have occupied a man’s life.

He has departed, after a rich life and a fruitful activity. The old law that no man’s life is free from pain must have been applied to him also; and yet his life seems to have been especially happy. He had what men generally desire most; but he knew how to ennoble external fortune by putting it at the service of unselfish objects. To him was granted, what is dearest to the mind of a noble spirit, to dwell in the centre of an affectionate family, and in a circle of faithful and distinguished friends. But I count his rarest happiness to be that he could work in pure enthusiasm for an ideal principle; and that he saw the cause which he served go on victoriously, and develop to unheard of wealth and ever wider activity.

And in conclusion we must add, in so far as thoughtfulness, purity of intention, moral and intellectual tact, modesty, and true humanity can rule over the caprices of fortune and of man, in so far was Magnus the artificer of his own fortune; one of the most satisfactory and contented natures, who secure the love and favour of men, who with sure inspiration know how to find the right place for their activity; and of whom we may say, envious fact does not embitter their successes, for, working for pure objects and with pure wishes, they would find contentment even without external successes.