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In Memory of D. A. Goldhammer.
(† December 16, 1922).
I. A. Sokolov.
At 3 o’clock in the afternoon on Saturday, December 16, one of the well-known Russian physicists, Professor of Kazan University Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Goldhammer, passed away. In a brief note, written under the fresh impression of the death of a teacher, it is impossible to characterize the magnitude of the loss sustained by Russian physical science and to sum up the scientific legacy left to us by D. A.; yet all the more insistently is felt the need to fix, as far as possible, in printed lines the image, now departed from life, of an eminent scholar.
D. A. Goldhammer was born in 1860 into the family of a military physician. Upon graduating from Moscow University in 1882, he was retained by the late A. G. Stoletov in his department. In 1884 the young scholar had already passed the master’s examination and was sent abroad on a study mission. The place of D. A.’s work was Strasbourg; his teacher became Kundt, from whose laboratory came P. N. Lebedev, V. A. Ulyanin, G. G. de Metz, and others. In 1888 D. A. returned from his mission and for a year and a half was assistant to his teacher A. G. Stoletov, until in 1890 he became a privat-docent of Kazan University. Both the school of Stoletov and the school of Kundt vouched that the talented young physicist would receive in his scientific activity a direction corresponding to the contemporary level of European science. However, provincial conditions did not give D. A. the opportunity to develop in the direction of an experimental scientist. Until 1897 the physics cabinet of Kazan University was directed by Prof. N. P. Sluginov; D. A. had to content himself with lecturing on meteorology and administering the then meager meteorological laboratory. And later, when, after the death of N. P. Sluginov and after receiving the doctoral degree, following the defense of the dissertation “The Electro-Magnetic Theory of Light,” D. A. took the chair of physics in Kazan, the neglected physics cabinet, scantily replenished with precision instruments, housed from the 1830s of the past century down to our own days in a cramped and unsuitable room, forced him to postpone experimental work until a more favorable time. D. A. never lived to see that time; his plans for creating in Kazan
the present physical institute was not destined to be realized,—twice—in 1904 and in 1914, when the Ministry of Public Education was ready to approve the estimate for the construction of the institute,—the war disrupted the realization of the deceased scholar’s dream.
Thus, external circumstances did not allow D. A. to work experimentally to the measure of his knowledge and gifts. He had to transfer his investigations into that sphere where he could encounter no obstacles—into the sphere of theoretical physics.
In this sphere an indelible imprint was left on D. A. by the scientific impressions of his youth. For his preparation for the master’s examination, A. G. Stoletov indicated to D. A., as the principal work, Maxwell’s treatise, then a new word. If even now Maxwell’s book has not lost its charm for us, it is not difficult to imagine how strongly this scientific revelation could influence the forming worldview of the young physicist. And to the impressions brought away from reading Maxwell, D. A. remained faithful throughout his whole life. Physics became for him, above all, the physics of the ether; in his works, including the last one, “Electromagnetic Phenomena in Moving Media,” he continuously developed Maxwell’s theory. In this respect he followed chiefly in Drude’s footsteps. Developing his interpretations of Maxwell’s theory, D. A. created his own theory of dispersion, to the elaboration and verification of which against experimental data his book Dispersion und Absorption des Lichtes was devoted.
In the sphere of theoretical investigations, D. A. was aided by his brilliant mathematical talent; within the range of the problems that presented themselves to him he knew no mathematical difficulties; he possessed the methods of analysis with rare mastery and brilliance. But D. A. owed the success of his theoretical works not to gifts alone. His whole life was one of uninterrupted labor, subordinated to an unchanging order. Every day, from 8 o’clock in the morning, D. A. sat down at his writing desk and immersed himself in calculations; at one o’clock in the afternoon he went to the university for lectures; on returning he allowed himself rest, but at 8 o’clock in the evening he was again at his writing desk until one, until two o’clock at night. D. A. remained faithful to this order of the day for scarcely less than twenty years, in winter and even in summer, at the dacha. Only illness, and departure from Kazan, compelled D. A. to change his working habits. This indefatigable labor had as its result the numerous works of D. A., printed by him both in Russian—in the Journal of the Physico-Chemical Society, in the Proceedings of the Kazan Physico-Mathematical Society, in the Scientific Notes of Kazan University—and in German in Annalen der Physik, Phys. Zeitschrift, and others.
D. A. also wrote many articles accessible to a broad circle of readers. Everyone knows his “Our Knowledge of the Ether,” “A Century of Physics,” “Time, Space, Ether,” and many others; finally, the brilliant monograph “Mechanical Processes” (molecules, ether, and electrons) in the publication Results of Science.
Many congresses of Russian natural scientists could count among their best communications the reports of D. A.: “On the Magnetization of Light,” “On the Corresponding States,” “Radiant Energy and the Theory of Quanta,” “On the Temperature of the Sun,” etc.; the general meetings of the congresses were constantly adorned by the substantial and formally interesting speeches of D. A., which he delivered with the mastery of a born orator, bringing into the exposition of scientific truths his own lively temperament, which he managed to preserve alongside restraint in the methods of his scientific work.
As a university teacher D. A. was an excellent lecturer, both of the general course of experimental physics1, which, despite the modest resources of Kazan University, he managed to arrange in an extraordinarily interesting way from the experimental side, and of theoretical courses. In his exposition of the foundations of optics and electromagnetism, D. A. allowed his students to feel his mathematical talent and virtuoso mastery in applying mathematics to physical investigations.
D. A. did not happen to create a school of pupils: in order to train experimenters, D. A. had no suitable laboratory; in order to follow the teacher in his achievements in the peaks of theoretical physics, his pupils would have had to possess a gift close to that of the teacher, which is the lot of not many.
Being a brilliant specialist physicist, D. A. did not confine his interests to a narrow circle. Among his scientific works we encounter works in chemistry and physiology; his “Processes of Life in Inanimate Nature” (Nauchnoe Slovo, 1904) are very interesting.
Being a major scholar, D. A. was a living man, responsive to all phenomena of reality. The year 1905 even drew him into the sphere of political journalism—he collaborated in the newspaper Novaya Zhizn.
The university, to which D. A. served for more than 30 years, valued D. A.’s scientific merits and his personal qualities. For many years in succession D. A. was dean of the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics and, finally, in 1916 became rector of the university.
After the October Revolution D. A. had to relinquish the title of rector, the bearing of which had been associated with great labors and sacrifices that had overstrained D. A.’s no longer young organism. Having relinquished the title of rector, D. A. did not lose his influence in the university. He remained a faithful guardian of academic traditions to his last days and did not hesitate boldly to express his authoritative word on all questions of the increasingly complicated life of a provincial university.
The last years were endured with difficulty by D. A. From 1914 the connection with the science of the West was broken, and D. A. painfully experienced his involuntary
scientific backwardness. The sense of isolation grew still stronger when, in 1919–20, Kazan, owing to the disruption of postal and railway communications, found itself cut off from the Russian centers—Moscow and Petrograd—which had managed to preserve within themselves the spark of scientific life. Even Russian scientific publications reached D. A. rarely and irregularly. The need to increase his earnings forced D. A. to undertake the delivery of an enormous number of lectures; in his last years he lectured every day, both morning and evening; in winter he would make his way through the dark streets of Kazan, at the risk of breaking his legs on the icy pavement, and, having arrived at the university, could not get warm in the freezing physics laboratory, where the water pipes no longer functioned and, for demonstrations, water had to be heated artificially.
But outward hardships could not compel D. A. to change his habit of scientific work. All his free time he devoted to work on “Electromagnetic Phenomena in Moving Media”1, which, as he foresaw, was to be his swan song. When fatigue compelled him to tear himself away from scientific work, D. A. would pass into another sphere: in the last years of his life D. A. was engaged in translating his favorite book—Goethe’s Faust—setting himself the goal of conveying the original as accurately as possible with respect to the meaning and the meter of the verse; D. A. generally had a good command of Russian verse, and it would be very interesting to see D. A.’s translation of Faust in print.
The attacks of the heart disease that brought D. A. to the grave appeared in him as early as 1920, but there were no severe attacks until February 1921, when the doctors diagnosed the fatal angina pectoris. From that moment D. A.’s life turned into a slow fading away, lasting almost a year. D. A. had to give up lecturing, to leave the writing desk for his deathbed. The awareness of this fading, apparently, did not leave D. A. until his final minute, and, probably, a great consolation in his grave condition was the thought that his young son, Alexander Dmitrievich, who had only just graduated from the university, had entered upon the path of service to physics, so dear to D. A., and was receiving from him his guidance and precepts.
Russian science will not forget the bright, vivid figure of D. A. On the pages of its chronicle, alongside the names of Lyubimov, Stoletov, Umov, and Lebedev, the name of Goldhammer will also be inscribed.