HELMHOLTZ IN BERLIN 



Berlin Dove and Riess would not admit the 

 principle ; Magnus modestly declined to express an 

 opinion, as he thought there should be a distinction 

 between mathematical and experimental physics ; the 

 mathematicians shook their heads, and we have it 

 on the authority of Du Bois Reymond that only 

 Jacobi, who himself had done excellent work in 

 mechanics, saw its truth. Helmholtz, referring in 

 after years to this opposition, said he was met by 

 some of the older men by such a remark as this, 

 ' This has already been well known to us ; 

 what does this young medical man imagine when 

 he thinks it necessary to explain so minutely all this 

 to us ? ' PoggendorfF actually refused to insert the 

 memoir in his famous periodical Annalen^ on the 

 ground of its theoretical character. Du Bois 

 Reymond took the manuscript to the publisher, 

 George Ernest Reimer, then engaged in bringing 

 out Du Bois's famous papers on animal electricity, and 

 he not only published the paper, but gave Helmholtz 

 a honorarium, a pecuniary recognition seldom awarded 

 to an abstruse scientific work. The value of the 

 work was soon recognised by the military authorities ; 

 Helmholtz became a marked man ; and with the 

 characteristic aptitude of the Germans for putting 

 the right man in the right place, he was relieved 

 largely from military duties, and encouraged to go 

 on with purely scientific work. KirchhofF, Clausius, 

 Du Bois Reymond, and others of the young and 

 43 



