158 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



Foundation 

 of German 

 universities. 



occupied the position of historiographer and diplomatist 

 at the Court of Brimswick/ and Tobias Mayer's valuable 

 observations were only published with the aid of English 

 money .^ But if the German princes did little or nothing 

 directly for the development of science, they indirectly 



1 Leibniz (1646-1716) entered, 

 1676, the service of John Frederick, 

 Duke of Hanover, as librarian and 

 councillor. The Duke died 1679, 

 and Ernest Augustus, who in 1692 

 was made Elector of Hanover, suc- 

 ceeded him. Leibniz's time was 

 taken up with diplomatic and legal 

 researches and negotiations refer- 

 ring to the position of the House 

 of Hanover, and the reunion of the 

 Protestant and Roman Catholic 

 Churches ; latterly with genealogi- 

 cal and antiquarian studies refer- 

 ring to the history of the House of 

 Brunswick. He wrote the ' Annales 

 imperii occidentis Brunsvicenses,' 

 beginning with the year 768, the 

 date of the accession of Charles the 

 Great, from whom Leibniz proved 

 that the House of Brunswick de- 

 scended through the Italian House 

 of Este. He carried the history 

 down to the year 1005, closing a 

 few days before his death with the 

 words, " quos ex tenebris eruendos 

 aliorum diligentia; relinquo." The 

 work was not printed till 1843, 

 when G. H. Pertz, the first editor 

 of the celebrated ' Monumenta 

 Germanitc' founded by the great 

 Stein, published it with an elabor- 

 ate preface. Of the annoyances to 

 which Leibniz was subjected in the 

 course of his studies, see an account 

 in the correspondence with the 

 Minister von Bernstorff (1705-16), 

 published by Doebner, Hanover, 

 1882, introduction. See also Guh- 

 rauer, ' Leibnitz, eine Biographic,' 

 2 vols., 2nd ed., Breslau, 1846. 

 Considering the greatness of 

 Leibniz in so many different 

 directions, his motto is note- 



worthj'^ : " Didici in mathematicis 

 ingenio, in natura experimentis, in 

 legibus divinis humanisque auctori- 

 tate, in historia testimoniis niteii- 

 dum esse." 



'^ Tobias Mayer (1723-62), born 

 at Marbach, the birthplace of 

 Schiller, from 1751 Professor of 

 Economics and Mathematics at 

 GiJttingen. To use the words of 

 Karsten Niebuhr, " Though he 

 had never seen a big ship, he 

 taught the English how to deter- 

 mine the longitude on the open 

 sea." He competed for the great 

 prize of 20,000 offered in 1713 by 

 the Board of Longitude for a method 

 of determining the longitude at 

 sea within V' accurately ; smaller 

 prizes being offered for an accuracy 

 of and 1. The prize of 5000, 

 and subsequently of 10,000, was 

 awarded to Harrison in 1758 and 

 1764 for his chronometers. Euler 

 and Mayer laboured in a different 

 direction at the same subject, bj' 

 publishing lunar tables and per- 

 fecting the lunar theory. After 

 repeated revisions, Mayer sent his 

 tables, 1755, to London, where they 

 were submitted to Bradley, who re- 

 ported favourably on them. After 

 further corrections, and after also 

 submitting his theory, Mayer's 

 widow received, in 1765, 5000, 

 Euler 3000, and the work was 

 published, 1770, by order of the 

 Board of Longitude, under the 

 title, 'Tabula; motuum solis et 

 lunte nova; et corrects, auctore 

 Tob. Mayer : Quibus accedit 

 methodus longitudinum promota 

 eodem auctore.' 



