Hermann Ebert

Hermann Ebert (1861 to 1913) was a German physicist, born in Leipzig and died in Munich. From 1881 he studied astronomy and physics in Leipzig under Heinrich Bruns and Gustav Wiedemann, and after graduation went to the University of Erlangen as an assistant to Eilhard Wiedemann. In 1894 he was chosen associate professor of theoretical physics in Leipzig and the same year became professor of experimental physics at the University of Kiel, and from 1898 he was professor of experimental physics at the Technical University in Munich. His earlier work dealt largely with spectroscopy and electric discharges in gases, and at Munich he did pioneering research on atmospheric electricity; his other interests included solar physics, zodiacal light, lunar craters, atmospheric optics and the Earth's magnetic field. His name is associated with the Ebert-Fastie spectrometer, built by William George Fastie on his 1889 monochromator design, and with Ebert's apparatus, an electrometer used to measure the concentration of atmospheric ions.