Johann Friedrich Wilhelm von Bezold (June 21, 1837 – February 17, 1907) was a German
physicist and
meteorologist born in
Munich,
Kingdom of Bavaria. He is best known for discovering the
Bezold effect
The Bezold effect is an optical illusion, named after a German professor of meteorology Wilhelm von Bezold (1837–1907), who discovered that a color may appear different depending on its relation to adjacent colors.
It happens when small areas o ...
and the
Bezold–Brücke shift.
Bezold studied mathematics and physics at the
University of Munich and the
University of Göttingen. He taught meteorology in Munich from 1861, becoming a professor in 1866. In 1868 he began teaching at the
Technical University of Munich. In 1875, he was named a member of the
Bavarian Academy of Sciences.
From 1885 to 1907 director of the
Prussian Institute of Meteorology at the
University of Berlin. As a scientist, he was mainly interested in the physics of the atmosphere, and he contributed much to the theory of
electrical storm
A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorms are someti ...
s.
Bezold was one of the early researchers of
atmospheric thermodynamics. He considered
pseudo-adiabatic processes describing
air as it is lifted, expands, cools, and eventually condenses and precipitates its
water vapor.
It was Bezold's investigations of
Lichtenberg dust figures that were useful to
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz
Heinrich Rudolf Hertz ( ; ; 22 February 1857 – 1 January 1894) was a German physicist who first conclusively proved the existence of the electromagnetic waves predicted by James Clerk Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism. The unit o ...
during his attempt to physically validate
Maxwell's mathematical analysis of electromagnetic waves.
[Heinrich Hert]
"Electric waves: being researches on the propagation of electric action with finite velocity through space"
/ref>
References
*W. von Bezold, Zur Thermodynamik der Atmosphäre. Pts. I, II. Sitz. K. Preuss. Akad. Wissensch. Berlin, pp. 485–522, 1189–1206; Gesammelte Abhandlugen, pp. 91–144. English translation by Abbe, C. The mechanics of the Earth's atmosphere. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, no 843, 1893, 212–242.
External links
Wilhelm von Bezold (1876
''The theory of color and its relation to art and art-industry... translated from the German by S. R. Koehler''
- digital facsimile from the Linda Hall Library
1837 births
1907 deaths
Burials at Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery
German meteorologists
German untitled nobility
19th-century German physicists
Scientists from Munich
Scientists from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni
Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
University of Göttingen alumni
Academic staff of the Technical University of Munich
Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin
Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities
People from the Kingdom of Bavaria
Recipients of the Cothenius Medal
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