March 24

© 1997, 1998 by Paul A. Schons

March 24, 1494

Birth of Georgius Agricola (original name, Georg Bauer) in Clauchau, Germany. Agricola was a humanist, physician and scientist who is often called "the father of mineralogy". He was one of the first to base his science on the observation of nature rather than speculation. The American president Herbert Hoover (himself a mining engineer) said of Agricola that he was, "the first to found any of the natural sciences upon research and observation, as opposed to previous fruitless speculation." Agricola studied humanities at the University of Leipzig and science and medicine in Bologna, Padua and Venice. During his lifetime he was a physician, mining engineer and mayor. Among his works are De re metallica (1556 posthumous), De natura fossilium, De natura eorum quae effluunt ex terra (1546) and De ortu et causis subterraneorum (1546).

March 24, 1739

Birth of Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart in Obersontheim, Germany. Schubart was a poet of the Sturm und Drang period (most noteworthy representatives of this period are Goethe and Schiller). Works by Schubart include Deutsche Chronik (1774-1778), Sämtliche Gedichte (1785-1786) and Schubarts Leben und Gesinnungen (1791-1793.

March 24, 1746

Death of the father of Immanuel Kant, Johann Georg Kant. The elder Kant had been a master harness maker in Königsberg. Immanuel Kant was 22 years old when his father died.

March 24, 1811

Birth of Fanny Lewald in Königsberg, Germany (now in Russia). Lewald was a writer of popular novels. Among her novels are Die Familie darner (1888), Geschlecht zu Geschlecht (8 vols. 1863-1865), and Diogena (1847).

March 24, 1819

Birth of Friedrich von Frerichs in Aurich, Germany. Frerichs founded the science of experimental pathology. He taught at the University of Breslau and later directed the Charite Hospital at the University of Berlin. One of his students was the Nobel Prize winner, Paul Ehrlich. Frerichs died on March 14, 1885 in Berlin.

March 24, 1821

Birth of Mathilde Marchesi de Castrone (born Graumann) in Frankfurt am Main. She was a teacher of operatic singing whose reputation was built on her teaching of the bel canto style. She taught at the music conservatories in Vienna and Cologne.

March 24, 1826

Death of Georg Nissen in Salzburg, Austria. A Danish diplomat, Nissen lived in Vienna, where he met and married the widow of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Konstanze. In cooperation with her he wrote the first biography of Mozart. In 1820 he and his wife moved toSalzburg where he lived until his death.

March 24, 1830

Birth of Robert Hamerling in Kirchberg am Walde, Austria. Hamerling was an epic poet. His two most significant epics are Ahasver in Rom (1866) and Der König von Sion (1869).

March 24, 1835

Birth of Josef Stefan in St. Peter, Austria. Stefan was a physicist at the University of Vienna. He concluded a law of physics through empirical studies, the Stefan-Boltzmann law. According to that law a blackbody has a radiant energy proportional to the fourth power of its temperature. The Boltzmann in the Stefan-Boltzmann law was another Austrian who proved the law theoretically.

March 24 1882

Robert Koch announced before the Physiological Society of Berlin that he had isolated and grown the tubercle bacillus, the cause of tuberculosis.

March 24, 1897

Birth of Wilhelm Reich in Dobrzcynica, Austria-Hungary (now in the Ukraine). Reich taught psychology at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. He developed an approach to psychoanalysis based on character as opposed to isolated symptoms. He left Germany in 1933 and found his way to the United States by 1939. In the United States he developed the rather strange notion that mental and physical ills result from deficiencies in levels of cosmic energy, "orgones" as he called them. He developed a box which he thought would increase "orgone" levels and marketed them quite aggressively. He was tried for fraud and ultimately sent to prison where he died in 1957.

March 24, 1903

Birth of Adolf Butenandt in Bremerhaven-Lehe, Germany. Butenand, a biochemist, won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1939 for his work on sex hormones. The Nazi government, however, did not allow him to accept the award. He accepted it belatedly in 1949. Butenandt isolated estrone in 1929, androsterone in 1931 and progesterone in 1934. He discovered how to synthesize progesterone and testosterone. He was the first to isolate pheromones. Butenandt was president of the Max Planck Society from 1960-1972.

March 24, 1927

Birth of Martin Walser in Wasserburg, Germany.

March 24, 1955

Death of Otto Gessler in Lindenberg, Germany. After World War I Gessler was a founding member of the Deutsche Demokratische Partei, served as minister of reconstruction from 1919-1920, became minister of war in 1920. In 1944 he was suspected of participating in the assassination conspiracy against Hitler and spent the last months of the war in a concentration camp. After the war he became the head of the German Red Cross.