Otto Linné Erdmann (11 April 1804 – 9 October 1869) was a German

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 th ...

. He was the son of Karl Gottfried Erdmann, the physician who introduced vaccination into Saxony. He was born in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

on 11 April 1804. In 1820 he began to attend the medico-chirurgical academy of his native place, and in 1822 he entered the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

, where in 1827 he became an associate professor, and in 1830 a full professor of chemistry. This office he held until his death, which happened at

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

on 9 October 1869. He was particularly successful as a teacher, and the laboratory established at Leipzig under his direction in 1843 was long regarded as a model institution. As an investigator he is best known for his work on

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

and

indigo Indigo is a deep color close to the color wheel blue (a primary color in the RGB color space), as well as to some variants of ultramarine, based on the ancient dye of the same name. The word "indigo" comes from the Latin word ''indicum'', m ...

and other dye-stuffs. With R. F. Marchand (1813–1850) he also carried out a number of determinations of

atomic weight Relative atomic mass (symbol: ''A''; sometimes abbreviated RAM or r.a.m.), also known by the deprecated synonym atomic weight, is a dimensionless physical quantity defined as the ratio of the average mass of atoms of a chemical element in a giv ...

s. In 1828 he founded the ''Journal für technische und ökonomische Chemie'', which became in 1834 the ''

Journal für praktische Chemie A journal, from the Old French ''journal'' (meaning "daily"), may refer to: *Bullet journal, a method of personal organization *Diary, a record of what happened over the course of a day or other period *Daybook, also known as a general journal, a ...

''. From 1853 A. F. G. Werther (1815–1869) was an editor of the journal. Erdmann was also the author of ''Über das Nickel'' (1827)
''Lehrbuch der Chemie''
(1828)

(1833), and ''Über das Studium der Chemie'' (1861).

Notes

References

* * * 1804 births 1869 deaths 19th-century German chemists Members of the First Chamber of the Diet of the Kingdom of Saxony Scientists from Dresden Academic staff of Leipzig University {{Germany-chemist-stub