Otto Lehmann (13 January 1855 in

Konstanz Konstanz (, , locally: ; also written as Constance in English) is a university city with approximately 83,000 inhabitants located at the western end of Lake Constance in the south of Germany. The city houses the University of Konstanz and was t ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

– 17 June 1922 in

Karlsruhe Karlsruhe ( , , ; South Franconian: ''Kallsruh'') is the third-largest city of the German state (''Land'') of Baden-Württemberg after its capital of Stuttgart and Mannheim, and the 22nd-largest city in the nation, with 308,436 inhabitants. ...

) was a German

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 ...

and "father" of

liquid crystal Liquid crystal (LC) is a state of matter whose properties are between those of conventional liquids and those of solid crystals. For example, a liquid crystal may flow like a liquid, but its molecules may be oriented in a crystal-like way. Th ...

Life

Otto was the son of Franz Xavier Lehmann, a mathematics teacher in the Baden-Wurtemberg school system, with a strong interest in

microscope A microscope () is a laboratory instrument used to examine objects that are too small to be seen by the naked eye. Microscopy is the science of investigating small objects and structures using a microscope. Microscopic means being invisi ...

s. Otto learned to experiment and keep records of this findings. Between 1872 and 1877, Lehmann studied

natural science Natural science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatab ...

s at the

University of Strassburg The University of Strasbourg (french: Université de Strasbourg, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. The French university traces its history to the ea ...

and obtained the Ph.D. under crystallographer Paul Groth. Otto used

polarizer A polarizer or polariser is an optical filter that lets light waves of a specific polarization pass through while blocking light waves of other polarizations. It can filter a beam of light of undefined or mixed polarization into a beam of wel ...

s in a microscope so that he might watch for

birefringence Birefringence is the optical property of a material having a refractive index that depends on the polarization and propagation direction of light. These optically anisotropic materials are said to be birefringent (or birefractive). The birefri ...

appearing in the process of crystallization. Initially becoming a school teacher for physics, mathematics and chemistry in Mülhausen ( Alsace-Lorraine), he started university teaching at the

RWTH Aachen University RWTH Aachen University (), also known as North Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Rhine-Westphalia Technical University of Aachen, Technical University of Aachen, University of Aachen, or ''Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hoch ...

in 1883. In 1889, he succeeded

Heinrich 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 uni ...

as head of the Institute of Physics in

. Lehmann received a letter from

Friedrich Reinitzer Friedrich Richard Reinitzer (25 February 1857 in Prague – 16 February 1927 in Graz) was an Austrian botanist and chemist. In late 1880s, experimenting with cholesteryl benzoate, he discovered properties of liquid crystals (named later by Ot ...

asking for confirmation of some unusual observations. As Dunmur and Sluckin(2011) say :It was Lehmann's jealously guarded and increasingly prestigious microscope, not yet available off the shelf, which had attracted Reinitzer's attention. With Reinitzer's peculiar double-melting liquid, a problem in search of a scientist had met a scientist in search of a problem. The article "On Flowing Crystals" that Lehmann wrote for Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie addresses directly the question of phase of matter involved, and leaves in its wake the science of

s. Lehmann was an ''unsuccessful nominee'' for a

Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...

from 1913 to 1922.

Work

*Selbstanfertigung physikalischer Apparate. Leipzig 1885. *Molekularphysik (i.e. ''Molecular physics''). 2 Bde, Leipzig 1888/89. *Die Kristallanalyse (i.e. ''The Analysis of Crystals''). Leipzig 1891. *Elektricität und Licht (i.e. ''Electricity and Light''). Braunschweig 1895. *Flüssige Krystalle (i.e. ''Liquid Crystals''). Leipzig 1904. *Die scheinbar lebenden Krystalle. Eßlingen 1907. *Die wichtigsten Begriffe und Gesetze der Physik. Berlin 1907. *Flüssige Kristalle und ihr scheinbares Leben. Forschungsergebnisse dargestellt in einem Kinofilm. Voss, Leipzig 1921.

References

* David Dunmur & Tim Sluckin (2011), ''Soap, Science, and Flat-screen TVs: a history of liquid crystals'', pp 20–7,

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print book ...

. * Michel Mitov (2014), ''Liquid-Crystal Science from 1888 to 1922: Building a Revolution'', in ''ChemPhysChem'', vol. 15, pp 1245–1250. {{DEFAULTSORT:Lehmann, Otto 1855 births 1922 deaths 19th-century German physicists People from Konstanz People from the Grand Duchy of Baden University of Strasbourg alumni Karlsruhe Institute of Technology faculty RWTH Aachen University faculty 20th-century German physicists