HERMANN VON HELMHOLTZ 



Indeed, it may be said that this was a transitional 

 period in the life of Helmholtz. A born physicist, as 

 he himself often said, he more and more occupied his 

 mind with some of the deepest problems in this depart- 

 ment of science. From 1866, when he published a 

 well-known paper on the sounds emitted by a contract- 

 ing muscle, and 1867, when the elaborate investiga- 

 tion of the bones of the ear appeared, he published little 

 that was purely physiological, and he devoted himself 

 almost entirely to physics. As he felt that this was 

 his vocation, he left physiological research to a great 

 extent in the hands of pupils, assisting and counselling 

 them in their work, sometimes co-operating in publica- 

 tion, as when, in 1867 and 1870, he issued the results 

 of a research by himself and his pupil Baxt on the 

 velocity of the nervous impulse in the motor nerves 

 of man. 



On the death of Magnus in 1871, it was felt that 

 only one of two men in Germany could take his place 

 as Professor of Physics in the University of Berlin. 

 Du Bois Reymond, who was then Rector of the 

 University, was empowered by von Miiller, the 

 Minister of Education, to go to Heidelberg and 

 persuade Kirchhoff, one of the founders of spectrum 

 analysis, or Helmholtz, to accept the vacant chair. 

 The Government of Baden would not allow Kirchhoff 

 to leave, and so the chair was offered to Helmholtz. 

 This he accepted with some reluctance, for he loved 

 the wooded hills around Heidelberg and the old 

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