Heinrich Streintz (May 7, 1848 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 ...

– November 11, 1892 in Graz ) was an

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

. Due to the frequent diseases of their son, the parents of Streintz moved to Graz. There, he visited

High School A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...

which he passed with great success in 1868. Soon the mathematical abilities of Streintz were discovered, so he occupied the subjects mathematics,

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and chemistry at the

University of Graz The University of Graz (german: link=no, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, ), located in Graz, Austria, is the largest and oldest university in Styria, as well as the second-largest and second-oldest university in Austria. History The univers ...

. Temporarily he studied also in

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 ...

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

, and Zurich. In Graz he attained a doctorate in 1872, and then he studied for some time under

Gustav Robert Kirchhoff Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects. He coin ...

and

Leo Königsberger Leo Königsberger (15 October 1837 – 15 December 1921) was a German mathematician, and historian of science. He is best known for his three-volume biography of Hermann von Helmholtz, which remains the standard reference on the subject. In 20 ...

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 ...

. Afterwards he worked in Vienna under

Josef Stefan Josef Stefan ( sl, Jožef Štefan; 24 March 1835 – 7 January 1893) was an ethnic Carinthian Slovene physicist, mathematician, and poet of the Austrian Empire. Life and work Stefan was born in an outskirt village of St. Peter (Slovene: ; to ...

at the Physical Institute, where he finished the habilitation and became a private lecturer in 1873. In 1875, he was appointed as an extraordinary

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

for mathematical physics to Graz, where he also became an ordinary professor in 1885. One of his colleagues in Graz was

Ludwig Boltzmann Ludwig Eduard Boltzmann (; 20 February 1844 – 5 September 1906) was an Austrian physicist and philosopher. His greatest achievements were the development of statistical mechanics, and the statistical explanation of the second law of ther ...

. In his scientific work (both theoretically and experimentally) Streintz was concerned with

probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set ...

, elasticity, and

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter that has a property of electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as describ ...

. Streintz also wrote many

abstracts An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract always ...

and

review A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company or a critical take on current affairs in literature, politics or culture. In addition to a critical evaluation, the review's author may assign the work a rating to indi ...

s for the Deutsche Literaturzeitung and for Austrian High Schools. However, his most important paper was "The physical foundations of mechanics" (german: Die physikalischen Grundlagen der Mechanik, 1883), where he criticized Newton's definitions of inertia, and introduced the expression "Fundamental body" (german: Fundamentalkörper) and "Fundamental Coordinate System" (german: Fundamental-Koordinatensystem), by which inertial motion should be defined more exactly. Similar considerations led shortly thereafter (1885) to the introduction of the term

inertial frame of reference In classical physics and special relativity, an inertial frame of reference (also called inertial reference frame, inertial frame, inertial space, or Galilean reference frame) is a frame of reference that is not undergoing any acceleration. ...

by Ludwig Lange.Ettingshausen, pp. 234–245

References

Publications

*''Über die Änderungen der Elastizität und der Länge eines vom galvanischen Strome durchflossenen Drahtes'', 1873. *''Die elektrischen Nachströme transversal magnetisirter Eisenstäbe'', 1877 *''Beiträge zur Kenntnis der elastischen Nachwirkung'', 1879 *
Die physikalischen Grundlagen der Mechanik
'. 1883

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Streintz, Heinrich 1848 births 1892 deaths Austrian physicists

See also

References

Publications

External links