Otto von Guericke

Otto von Guericke (1602-1686) was a German physicist, inventor, mathematician and politician from Magdeburg who worked during the Scientific Revolution, serving as the city's chief magistrate for four decades while conducting pioneering experiments on vacuums and atmospheric pressure. He invented an air pump around 1650 and used it in the Magdeburg hemispheres experiment of 1657, in which teams of horses could not pull apart two joined evacuated metal hemispheres, demonstrating the force of atmospheric pressure. He also built an early barometer and, before 1663, constructed one of the first electrostatic generators, using a rotating sulfur globe to produce and study electrostatic attraction and repulsion. His experimental methods influenced later scientists including Robert Boyle and helped establish rigorous, repeatable demonstration as a foundation of experimental physics.