Julius Ludwig Weisbach (born 10 August 1806 in
Mittelschmiedeberg (now
Mildenau
Mildenau is a municipality in the district of Erzgebirgskreis, in Saxony, Germany.
History
From 1952 to 1990, Mildenau was part of the Bezirk Karl-Marx-Stadt of East Germany
East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; ge ...
Municipality),
Erzgebirge, died 24 February 1871,
Freiberg) was a German mathematician and engineer.
Life and work
Weisbach studied at the ''
Bergakademie'' in
Freiberg from 1822 - 1826. After that, he studied with
Carl Friedrich Gauss in
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
and with
Friedrich Mohs in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
.
In 1831 he returned to
Freiberg where he worked as mathematics teacher at the local Gymnasium. In 1833 he became teacher for Mathematics and the Theory of Mountain Machines at the Freiberg ''Bergakademie''. In 1836 he was promoted to Professor for applied mathematics, mechanics, theory of mountain machines and so-called ''Markscheidekunst''.
Weisbach wrote an influential book for mechanical engineering students, called ''Lehrbuch der Ingenieur- und Maschinenmechanik'', which has been expanded and reprinted on numerous occasions between 1845 and 1863.
He also refined the Darcy equation into the still widely used
Darcy–Weisbach equation
In fluid dynamics, the Darcy–Weisbach equation is an empirical equation that relates the head loss, or pressure loss, due to friction along a given length of pipe to the average velocity of the fluid flow for an incompressible fluid. The equation ...
.
In 1868 he was elected a foreign member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...
.
Family
His daughter Maria Camilla Weisbach (1835–1908) met
Edward Carl Hegeler (1835–1910) when he was studying with her father at Freiberg and later married him on 5 April, 1860. The couple settled in
LaSalle,
Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
, where Hegeler had set up the
Matthiessen-Hegeler Zinc Company. Their daughter
Mary Hegeler, later Carus, was born on 10 January 1861, the first of ten children. Mary worked alongside her father as a young girl and was the first woman to graduate from the
University of Michigan
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
with a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1882. In 1885 she became the first woman to be legally enrolled to study at her grandfather's university, Bergakademie Freiberg, following a letter of recommendation from her cousin
Clemens Winkler.
Selected publications
*''Handbuch der Bergmaschinenmechanik'' (2 Bde., 1835/1836)
*''Lehrbuch der Ingenieur- und Maschinenmechanik'' (3 Bde., 1845/1863)
*''Der Ingenieur, Sammlung von Tafeln, Formeln und Regeln der Arithmetik, Geometrie und Mechanik'' (1848)
*''Die neue Markscheidekunst und ihre Anwendung auf die Anlage des Rothschönberger Stollns bei Freiberg'' (1851)
*''Anleitung zum axonometrischen Zeichnen'' (1857)
Notes
References
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Weisbach, Julius
19th-century German mathematicians
Engineers from Saxony
University of Göttingen alumni
Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
1806 births
1871 deaths
Scientists from Freiberg
Fluid dynamicists