Academic literature on the topic '1819-1852'

Pyotr Nikolaevich Chirvinsky (1880–1955), the eminent Russian geologist, is best known as the founder of the science of meteorology. In the 1920s, Chirvinsky became the director of the Donskoi Polytechnic at Novochercassk. He spent a great deal of time as a consultant for the mines scattered throughout the Russian empire: along the Donets Basin, on the Kola and Crimean peninsulas, on the northeastern slopes of the Caucasus, and in the enormously rich mineral deposits of the Urals. His major objective in this work was to establish connections between the chemical composition of terrestrial minerals and meteorites by studying the quantity of a mineral present in a given sample of rock and the physicochemical conditions leading to its formation. He insisted that meteorites be considered legitimate objects of study in petrology, and because they had been formed in heavenly bodies and not on earth, they might provide clues regarding the formation of elements from primal material. Chirvinsky had predecessors in this way of thinking, as we shall see. The concept of prime matter is very old, coming before the definition of a chemical element, but connected to the idea of the elements. Raymond Lull (ca. 1235–1315), in his book, De Materia, defined the concept of prime matter as an element in potentia in all possible substances. The idea was very acceptable to many alchemists up until the end of the 19th century. In 1800, Jakob Joseph Winterl (1732?–1809) was a famous physician and professor at the University of Nagyszombat, in present-day Hungary. He developed a vitalistic and dualistic concept that was, from a certain point of view, anti-Enlightenment, according to which all of the chemical elements would have originated from two immaterial principles: one male, andronia, and the other female, thelyke. Although Winterl’s speculations may have been based on doubtful or misinterpreted experimental evidence, many German chemists accepted his theory. The physicist Heinrich Pfaff (1773–1852) embraced Winterl’s theory with enthusiasm, as did the pharmacist Johann Friedrich Westrumb (1751–1819) who propagated the concepts of thelyke and andronia. The first problems occurred when Winterl was unsuccessful in experimentally proving his theory.