Daniel Gralath (30 May 1708 – 23 July 1767) was a physicist and a mayor of Danzig.[1]
Gralath was born and died in Danzig (Gdańsk) in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. He came from a well-to-do trade family. He studied law and philosophy in Halle, Leyden and Marburg from 1728 to 1734. Later he became councilman and, in 1763, mayor of Danzig.[1] His father-in-law was Jacob Theodor Klein (1685–1759), a city secretary and a distinguished scientist, nicknamed Gedanensium Plinius.
As a physicist, Gralath worked on electricity, founded the Danzig Research Society, and repeated the experiments of Ewald Georg von Kleist with the Leyden jar.[1] Gralath improved the design of the Leyden jar and demonstrated its effects on a chain of 20 persons.[2] He was also the first to combine several jars to make a battery,[3] but that claim is disputed.[4] From 1747 to 1756, he published his "History of Electricity" in three parts in issues of Versuche und Abhandlungen der Naturforschende Gesellschaft in Danzig,[5] which may have contributed to the historical judgement that he was the first to combine several Leyden jars.[6]
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