Georg Christoph Lichtenberg is a 18th-century German scientist, satirist and anglophile, most famous for his notebooks published posthumously (which he himself known as "waste books", using the English bookkeeping term).

Life
Natural into the unfortunate pastor family, Lichtenberg became a hunchback due to a malformation of the spine before his adulthood. Assisted by the local patron, around 1763 he entered Göttingen University, where around 1769 he became extraordinary prof of physics, and half a dozen years late average prof. He held this post till his dying.

One of a number 1 man of science to introuduce experiments with apparatus in their lectures, Lichtenberg was the virtually all popular & respected figure in the European noetic circle of his period. He maintained a good relations by using virtually all peachy numbers of that era, inlcuding Goethe and Kant. Inside 1784 Alessandro Volta visited Göttingen especially to see a human & his experiments. Around 1793 he was elected a member of the Royal Society. As a physicist, now he is remembered, within case the least bit, for his investigations in electricity, or thomas more precisely for the and then-supposed Lichtenberg figures.

Invited by his enthusiastic students, he visited England twice, from Easter to early summertime 1770 and from August 1774 to Christmas 1775, in which he was received warmly by George III and Queen Charlotte. a Groovy Britain impressed him lot, & he became a easily-known anglophil when the visits.

Susceptible to feminine charm, he experienced numerous romances. Virtually all of the girls were from either unfortunate families. Around 1777 he met Maria Stechard , so aged Thirteen, world health organization swallow a prof for good since 1780. She died within 1782, tremendously to Lichtenberg's distress. A relation between a human & his "little daughter" was manufactured into the novel by Gert Hofmann (which has been translated by his son Michael Hofmann into English, by using a title Lichtenberg & a Little Flower Girl). In a as punishment month, all the same, he met the 22-month-old Margarethe Kellner. He married her inside 1789, sequentially to give her the pension, as he thought he was to die presently. She gave him vi toddlers, & outlived him by 49 years.

When characteristic of the human world health organization thinks bay, Lichtenberg was very much prone to procrastination. He failed to launch a foremost ever hydrogen balloon, and though he universally dreamed of writing the novel à la Fielding's Tom Jones, he never finished more than two or three web sites.

He became the hypochondriac, and an unhappy human, in the previous years of his life. He died at the age of 56, fallowing a short unwellness.

Waste books
Lichtenberg's monument at the marketplace in Göttingen. A "waste books" (Lichtenberg rendered it about when Sudelbuch) come a notebooks he saved from either his student times until a prevent of his life. Apiece volume was accorded the letter of the alphabet from either The, which begun around 1765, to L, which breaks off at Lichtenberg's dying within 1799.

These notebooks number one became known to a globe when the human's demise, whilst a foremost & 2nd editions of Lichtenbergs Vermischte Schriften (1800-06 & 1844-53) were published by his sons & brothers. Since a initial publications, yet, notebooks G & H, & virtually all of notebook K, own been destroyed or even disapppeared. Victims missing area come believed to contain sensitive materials. A manuscripts of the left over notebooks come okay, preserved within Göttingen University.

A notebooks contain quotations that struck Lichtenberg, titles of books to page through, autobiographical sketches, & short or even yearn reflections. It's people reflections that support Lichtenberg earn his posthumous fame. In todays world he is take to be one of a better aphorists in the Western noetic history. the few scholars use attempted to distill a formulas of thought away from Lichtenberg's scattered musings, however of these should universally remember that Lichtenberg was never the agent philosopher, & got there are no require to present, or even to keep around, any uniform philosophy.

Admirers of Lichtenberg's godforsaken books include Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Freud and Wittgenstein. A latter ternary come known to stand been inspired well by Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg is non understand by numbers of outside Germany. The notable exception is the Chinese scholar & wit Qian Zhongshu, who quotes a Waste books around his works numbers of days. Leo Tolstoy is also known to love Lichtenberg.

Other works
As a ironist, Lichtenberg requires high rank among a German writers of the 18th century. His biting wit taking part him around numbers of argument by using easily-known coeval, like a Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741-1801) whose science of physiognomy he ridiculed, and Johann Heinrich Voss, whose views on Greek pronunciation called forth river the right sarcasm, Über die Pronunciation five hundred Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes (1782).

According to his visits of England, his Briefe aus England (1776]]-1778), with admirable descriptions of Garrick's acting, are the most attractive of his writings published during his lifetime. He contributed to the Göttinger Taschen Calender from 1778 onwards, and to the Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, which he edited for three years (1780-1782) with J. G. The. Forster. He also published in 1794-1799 an Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche in which he described the satirical details in William Hogarth's prints.

Selected bibliography
Works published during his lifetime Briefe aus England, 1776-78 Über Physiognomik, wider die Physiognomen, 1778 Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur, 1780-85 (ed. by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg and Georg Forster) Über die Pronunciation der Schöpse des alten Griechenlandes, 1782 Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche, 1794-1799 Complete works in German Schriften und Briefe, 1968-72 (4 vols., ed. by Wolfgang Promies) English translations The Lichtenberg Reader, 1959 (trans. and ed. by Franz H. Mautner and Henry Hatfield) ''The World of Hogarth. Lichtenberg's Commentaries on Hogarth's Engravings, 1966 (trans. by Innes and Gustav Herdan) Hogarth on High Life. The Marriage à la Mode Series, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Commentaries, 1970 (trans. and ed. by Arthur S. Wensinger and W. B. Coley) Aphorisms, 1990 (trans. with an introduction and notes by R. J. Hollingdale), reprinted as The Waste Books'', 2000