Hermann Knoblauch

Karl Hermann Knoblauch (1820 to 1895) was a German physicist, most notable for his studies of radiant heat, and one of the six founding members of the Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft in Berlin on 14 January 1845. The son of a well-to-do silk manufacturer in Berlin, he resisted pressure to enter the family business and studied mathematics and science at the University of Berlin, where he became one of the star students in the laboratory of Gustav Magnus. His doctorate of 1847 described experiments that established optical properties of radiant heat, or infrared radiation, and he held that experimental facts are the only permanent things in science while abstract models are transitory. As researcher and teacher at the University of Marburg from 1849 to 1853 he produced experimental demonstrations about diamagnetism with his student and collaborator John Tyndall. In 1853 he moved to the University of Halle, where he stayed for the rest of his career, giving time to administrative duties in German science, including 17 years as president of the German Academy of Sciences, and serving for a while as rector of the university.