Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz (/lɛnts/; German:[lɛnts]; also Emil Khristianovich Lenz, Russian: Эмилий Христианович Ленц; 12 February 1804 – 10 February 1865), usually cited as Emil Lenz[1][2]orHeinrich Lenz in some countries, was a Russian physicist of Baltic German descent who is most noted for formulating Lenz's law in electrodynamics in 1834.[3]
Lenz was born in Dorpat (nowadays Tartu, Estonia), at that time in the Governorate of Livonia in the Russian Empire. After completing his secondary education in 1820, Lenz studied chemistry and physics at the University of Dorpat.[2] He traveled with the navigator Otto von Kotzebue on his third expedition around the world from 1823 to 1826. On the voyage Lenz studied climatic conditions and the physical properties of seawater. The results were published in "Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences" (1831).[4]
Lenz had begun studying electromagnetism in 1831. Besides the law named in his honor, Lenz also independently discovered Joule's law in 1842; to honor his efforts on the problem, it is also given the name the『Joule–Lenz law,』named also for James Prescott Joule.
Lenz eagerly participated in development of the electroplating technology, invented by his friend and colleague Moritz von Jacobi. In 1839, Lenz produced several medallions using electrotyping. Along with the electrotyped relief produced by Jacobi the same year, these were the first instances of galvanoplastic sculpture.[5]
Lenz died in Rome, after suffering a cerebral haemorrhage.
A lunar crater on the far side of the Moon is named after him.
^I. Grattan-Guinness (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of the History and Philosophy of the Mathematical Sciences, Volume 2, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, p. 1213.
^Andreas W. Daum: German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800: Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise. In: Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I, ed. Hartmut Berghoff et al. New York, Berghahn Books, 2019, 70‒102, here 87, 89, 93.
