Early Life
Von Mayer was born on November 25, 1814 in Heilbronn, Württemberg (Baden-Württemberg, modern day Germany), the son of a pharmacist. He grew up in Heilbronn. After completing his Abitur, he studied medicine at the University of Tübingen, where he was a member of the Corps Guestphalia, a German Student Corps. During 1838 he attained his doctorate as well as passing the Staatsexamen. After a stay in Paris (1839/40) he left as a ship's physician on a Dutch three-mast sailing ship for a journey to Jakarta.
Although he had hardly been interested before this journey in physical phenomena, his observation that storm-whipped waves are warmer than the calm sea started him thinking about the laws of nature, in particular about the physical phenomenon of warmth and the question: whether the directly developed heat alone or whether the sum of the amounts of heat developed in direct and indirect ways contributes to the temperature. After his return in February 1841 Mayer dedicated his efforts to solve this problem.
In 1841 he settled in Heilbronn and married.
Read more about this topic: Julius Von Mayer
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“Biography is: a system in which the contradictions of a human life are unified.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)