Johann Karl Friedrich Zöllner
1834–82
German astrophysicist. Studied physics and natural sciences in Berlin and Basel; doctorate, Basel, 1859. Worked in a private observatory on his father’s estate, where he developed new instruments for photometry and spectroscopy. Assistant, Leipzig observatory, 1862. Habilitated, 1865; professor of astrophysics, Leipzig, 1872. Became interested in spiritualism after seeing performances by Henry Slade; tried to explain Slade’s abilities in terms of his concept of a fourth spatial dimension.
Sources
ADB
Stromberg 1989
Bibliography
ADB: Allgemeine deutsche Biographie. Under the auspices of the Historical Commission of the Royal Academy of Sciences. 56 vols. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. 1875–1912.
Stromberg, Wayne H. 1989. Helmholtz and Zoellner: nineteenth-century empiricism, spiritism, and the theory of space perception. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 25: 371–83.
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