Eilhard Mitscherlich (7 January 1794 – 28 August 1863) was a German chemist, who is perhaps best remembered today for his law of isomorphism (1819), which states that compounds crystallizing together probably have similar structures and compositions. This relationship was used by Berzelius in early attempts to assign relative masses to the elements.
Mitscherlich was born at Neuende (now a part of Wilhelmshaven) in the Lordship of Jever, where his...
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Eilhard Mitscherlich (7 January 1794 – 28 August 1863) was a German chemist, who is perhaps best remembered today for his law of isomorphism (1819), which states that compounds crystallizing together probably have similar structures and compositions. This relationship was used by Berzelius in early attempts to assign relative masses to the elements.
Mitscherlich was born at Neuende (now a part of Wilhelmshaven) in the Lordship of Jever, where his father was pastor. His uncle, Christoph Wilhelm Mitscherlich (1760-1854), professor at Göttingen, was in his day a celebrated scholar. He was educated at Jever under the historian Friedrich Christoph Schlosser, when he went to Heidelberg in 1811, and devoted himself to philology, giving special attention to the Persian language. In 1813 he went to Paris to obtain permission to join the embassy which Napoleon I of France was sending to Persia.
The events of 1814 put an end to this, and Mitscherlich resolved to study medicine in order that he...
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