Eduard Riecke

Karl Victor Eduard Riecke (1845 to 1915) was a German experimental physicist. He studied physics at the Stuttgart Polytechnic, the University of Tübingen and the University of Göttingen under Wilhelm Weber and Friedrich Kohlrausch, received his doctorate in 1871 and qualified as a professor shortly after. In 1873 he became associate professor and in 1881 full professor, a post he kept until his death. He conducted experiments on electrical conduction in metals, further developing a model of conduction by electrons begun by Paul Drude, with which the decrease in conductivity with rising temperature could be explained, and later worked on electrical conduction in gases. The Bavarian Academy of Sciences appointed him a corresponding member in 1909, his students included Johannes Stark, and he wrote a two-volume Lehrbuch der Physik published in Leipzig in 1908.