Chladni, Ernst Florens Friedrich

[Portrait Ernst Chladni]

Bio: * 1756, Wittenberg, Germany; † 1827, Wroclaw, Poland
Career: Studies of law at the Universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig, both in Germany; 1781 Dr. phil. and 1782 Dr. jur. in Leipzig; after the death of his father in 1782, a jurist who wanted him to study law, Chladni turned to science, choosing acoustics as his particular area of experimental investigation; devised the sand pattern technique to provide demonstrations of the vibrations of surfaces, explained in Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klanges (1787); designed and constructed two keyboard instruments, the euphonium (1780) and the clavicylinder (1800); lecture tours to present his results in Europe capitals, famous listeners were Napoleon, Goethe, Lichtenberg, Pierre Simon Marquis de Laplace and Siméon Denis Poisson; discovered in astronomical studies the space as source of meteors; died traveling in 1827.
Degrees: Dr. phil., University of Leipzig, 1781; Dr. jur., University of Leipzig, 1782

Chladni, Ernst Florens Friedrich. 1830. Die Akustik. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. Book

Chladni, Ernst Florens Friedrich. 1826. Ueber Töne bloss durch schnell auf einander folgende Stösse, ohne einen klingenden Körper. In: Annalen der Physik und Chemie 8: 453-460. Journal Article