176 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



academician, Werner the head of a great mining school, 

 Humboldt a traveller, Markgraf a private gentleman. 

 Haller, indeed, shone as a great light in the University 

 of Gottingen, where he did more than any other to place 

 scientific studies on a level with classical ones, and to 

 create for them a permanent abode within the pale of 

 "alma mater." He founded in 1751, in close connection 

 with the university, the Gottingen Society, which from 

 1753 published the celebrated ' Gottinger Gelehrte An- 

 zeigen.' ^ Tobias Mayer and Lambert ^ can hardly be 

 said to have got much help either from the university, 

 to which the former belonged, or from the Academy, of 

 which the latter was a member ; their celebrity rests on 

 works produced by private and unaided effort. Hum- 

 boldt also depended upon his personal means and upon 

 his connection with the Paris Academy, and only attained 

 late in life, and in the course of the present century, his 

 eminent position as the head and patron of German 

 science. Von Zach and Gibers, who together with Tobias 

 Mayer and Lambert raised German astronomy during the 

 eighteenth century to the level of English and French 

 science, stood outside the university system. Von Zach 

 was indebted to personal connections, and ultimately 

 to Duke Ernest IL of Gotha, for the position which 



1 The ' Gottinger Gelehrte An- 

 zeigen' had existed since 1739. 



2 Joh. Heinrich Lambert (1728- 

 77), a very extraordinary man, was 

 a native of Miihlhausen, Alsace, 

 which then belonged to Switzer- 

 land. He was received as a mem- 

 ber of the Berlin Academy, and 

 associated there with Euler and 

 Lagrange. He is celebrated through 

 his 'Photometry' (1760) and 'Pyro- 

 metry ' (1779), his equation referring 



to the orbits of comets, employed 

 by Gibers in his method for calcu- 

 lating them (Weimar, 1797, re- 

 published by Encke, 1847), and his 

 prophetic prediction of the proper 

 motion of the sun (in his Cosmolo- 

 gical Letters, 1761). This motion 

 was actually calculated by Sir Wil- 

 liam Herschel in his paper " On the 

 proper Motion of the Sun and Solar 

 System" ('Philos. Trans., 1783). 



