John Theodore Merz (30 March 1840 – 21 March 1922) was a German British

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

and industrialist. Merz was born in Manchester, England and educated at

University of Giessen University of Giessen, official name Justus Liebig University Giessen (german: Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen), is a large public research university in Giessen, Hesse, Germany. It is named after its most famous faculty member, Justus von ...

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911. General information The ori ...

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

, and

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

universities. Merz was vice-chairman of the

Newcastle-upon-Tyne Electric Supply Company The North Eastern Electric Supply Company (commonly abbreviated to NESCo) was responsible for the supply of electricity to a large amount of North East England, prior to the nationalisation of the British electricity industry with the Electricity ...

, which he founded in 1889. He was chairman of the

Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company operated an electric tramway service in Gosforth, Wallsend and North Shields between 1902 and 1930. Overview History Tyneside Tramways and Tramroads Company built the electric tramway on the route of the ...

and a member of the senate of Durham University. In 1906, he was awarded an LLD degree from the

University of Aberdeen , mottoeng = The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom , established = , type = Public research universityAncient university , endowment = £58.4 million (2021) , budget ...

. The author of philosophical works on Leibniz, and ''Religion and Science'' (1915), his four volume ''History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century'' consummated

William Whewell William Whewell ( ; 24 May 17946 March 1866) was an English polymath, scientist, Anglican priest, philosopher, theologian, and historian of science. He was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In his time as a student there, he achieved ...

's ''History of the Inductive Sciences'' (1837) and ''The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History'' (1840) as well as

William Stanley Jevons William Stanley Jevons (; 1 September 183513 August 1882) was an English economist and logician. Irving Fisher described Jevons's book ''A General Mathematical Theory of Political Economy'' (1862) as the start of the mathematical method in ec ...

' ''Principles of Science'' (1874). Merz' first two volumes describe the development of mathematical and scientific thought, and the final two volumes depict the development of philosophy."The Mental Life of the Nineteenth Century," ''The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art'' (11 March 1905) Vol.99, pp.315-316 Merz stated the following with reference to his history:

It is the object of these volumes to fix, if possible, this possession; to rescue from oblivion that which appears to me our secret property; in the last and dying hour of a remarkable age to throw the light upon the fading outlines of its mental life; to try to trace them, and with the aid of all possible information, gained from the written testimonies or the records of others, to work them into a coherent picture, which may give to those who follow some idea of the peculiar manner in which our age looked upon the world and life, how it intellectualised and spiritualised them.

It was Merz's objective to write this history of thought from the point of view of one who shared in the progress and watched many of the changes and movements, and to set out the inner life of his contemporaries and the secret springs of their judgements and opinions. His mathematical library known as the Merz Collection is held by Newcastle University. It consists of 4000 volumes, including works on philosophy, European history and German Literature. The university's Merz Court was named after the Merz family. Merz was buried in Elswick, St John's Cemetery.Tyne and Wear HER(5285): Elswick, St John's Cemetery – Details
/ref> His son, Charles Hesterman Merz, was a successful electrical engineer who pioneered the use of high-voltage three-phase AC power distribution in the United Kingdom.

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John Theodore Merz (1840–1922), Chemist, Historian and Industrialist
Oil on canvas portrait by unknown artist from the BBC {{DEFAULTSORT:Merz, John Theodore 1840 births 1922 deaths 19th-century English chemists English Quakers 19th-century German chemists University of Bonn alumni English people of German descent German Quakers 19th-century English historians 19th-century German historians Businesspeople from Manchester