Person

Feddersen, Berend Wilhelm, 1832-1918

1832-1918

Berend Wilhelm Feddersen was born on March 26, 1832, in Schleswig, Germany.

He was a German physicist. He studied chemistry and physics at the University of Göttingen, Berlin, Leipzig, and Kiel, where he received the doctorate in 1858 with a dissertation on the nature of electric-spark discharges, "Beiträge zur Kenntniss des elektrischen Funkens". He showed that the discharge of a Leiden flask produces a train of damped oscillations, which he contrived to record in a series of splendid photographs. He is also remembered for his contributions to scientific bibliography, Poggendorff’s “Biographisch-literarisches Handwöreterbuch, vols. I–V” (now in its 7th edition). He undertook its editorship after the death of the first editor, Johann Christian Poggendorff, in 1877.

In 1866, he married a distant cousin Dora Feddersen (-1889) and in 1890, he married Helga Kjär (1852-1936). He died on July 1, 1918, in Leipzig, Germany.