Koenig couldn’t interest anyone in Germany in his proposals for a high-speed printing-press, so he moved to London and patented it with the help of Nicholson (in his guise as patent agent). A revolutionary but undeveloped idea of Nicholson’s was central to the version of his machine that was successfully sold to The Times, effectively starting the age of mass media. Koenig’s patents proved hard to enforce, however, and in the face of widespread pirating of his designs he quit London and returned to Germany.
Profession: inventor
George Antheil
Antheil was an ambitiously avant-garde composer whose Ballet Mécanique scores, composed for Léger’s film, have entered the modernist canon. Stravinsky, met in Berlin, was his hero (though Antheil’s abuse of their friendship cut it short). In Paris, Picasso, Yeats and Joyce championed him, and especially Pound (even though he understood nothing of Antheil’s music), both Pound and Joyce (a good musician) planning various collaborations with him. Eliot and Werfel helped him with a crime novel. He dined with Satie and Cocteau, corresponded widely, and really did patent an advanced torpedo guidance system with Lamarr.
George Antheil knew…
- William Butler Yeats
- Dudley Murphy
- Henry Cowell
- Lou Harrison
- Ezra Pound
- Virgil Thomson
- Ford Madox Ford
- Aaron Copland
- Benjamin Britten
- James Joyce
- Theo van Doesburg
- T. S. Eliot
- Salvador Dalí
- Pablo Picasso
- Man Ray
- Kurt Schwitters
- John Marin
- Joan Miró
- Jean Cocteau
- Igor Stravinsky
- Gertrude Stein
- Fernand Léger
- Ernest Hemingway
- Erik Satie
- Darius Milhaud
- Alfred Stieglitz
- Alexander Calder
- Ernst Krenek
- Franz Werfel
- George Balanchine
- Hedy Lamarr
- Margaret Anderson
- Percy Grainger
- Samuel Barber
- Thomas MacGreevy
Richard Lovell Edgeworth
The inventive Edgeworth, an uncategorisable radical thinker and father to 22 children, is particularly known for his enquiring, child-centred ideas about education. Darwin, Wedgwood, Boulton, Watt, Keir and Small were all Lunar Society friends, the first two especially close. Johnson published his best-known work, co-written with his daughter Maria. His translator Pictet drew him to France, where he met Montgolfier, and where he and his lifelong friend Day visited their hero Rousseau. He was introduced by his friend Banks to Hunter, Cook, Solander, Maskelyne and Smeaton, and constructed an early and unsuccessful telegraph across Ireland with Beaufort.
Richard Lovell Edgeworth knew…
- John Hunter
- Nevil Maskelyne
- Daniel Solander
- John Smeaton
- James Keir
- William Small
- Dugald Stewart
- Maria Edgeworth
- James Cook
- Joseph Johnson
- Matthew Boulton
- Erasmus Darwin
- Josiah Wedgwood
- James Watt
- Thomas Telford
- Joseph Banks
- Thomas Beddoes
- Marc-Auguste Pictet
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- James Hutton
- Humphry Davy
- Anna Laetitia Barbauld
- Francis Beaufort
- Joseph-Michel Montgolfier
- Thomas Day
- Thomas Malthus
William Henry Fox Talbot
Talbot (or Fox Talbot – both are used, though Talbot is correct), one of the great founders of photography, was also a noted mathematician, astronomer, botanist and more. His two great lifelong friends and colleagues were John Herschel and Brewster; Herschel’s chemical knowledge and terminological wisdom were critical, while Brewster’s interest in light and optics closely paralleled Talbot’s own. Talbot worked with Arago at his Paris observatory, ordered optics from Fraunhofer, and swapped seeds with Hooker. He corresponded with Crelle about calculus, Hincks about cuneiform translation and Zach about astronomy, among many others.
William Henry Fox Talbot knew…
- William Crookes
- Thomas Moore
- Augustin Pyramus de Candolle
- William Herschel
- Charles Piazzi Smyth
- Peter Guthrie Tait
- Isambard Kingdom Brunel
- George Airy
- John Herschel
- Franz Xaver von Zach
- August Leopold Crelle
- Jean-Victor Poncelet
- Alexander von Humboldt
- David Brewster
- Adolphe Quetelet
- William Hyde Wollaston
- William Whewell
- Charles Babbage
- Carl Friedrich von Martius
- William Hooker
- Francis Bauer
- Peter Mark Roget
- Michael Faraday
- Jean-Baptiste Biot
- François Arago
- Charles Wheatstone
- Edward Hincks
- James Edward Smith
- Joseph von Fraunhofer
- Thomas Babbington Macaulay
- Warren de la Rue
- William Robert Grove
Dmitri Mendeleev
As well as being responsible for the periodic table and doing extensive other research, Mendeleev got Russia to adopt the metric system. He studied under Bunsen and Kirchhoff in Heidelberg (much favoured by Russian students), and met Zinin and invited Borodin there. He also studied with Regnault, and met Dumas and Berthelot in Paris, and Liebig in Munich. Blok married his daughter Lyubov. Repin was among the artists he lectured to about colour chemistry, while the auto-didact Tsiolkovsky wrote and got his advice. If Turgenev didn’t meet him in Paris or in Heidelberg, he wrote about a notably similar man.
Dmitri Mendeleev knew…
- William Crookes
- Peter Guthrie Tait
- Jean-Baptiste Dumas
- Gustav Kirchhoff
- Lothar Meyer
- Henri-Victor Regnault
- Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
- Justus von Liebig
- Alexander Blok
- Alexander Borodin
- Ilya Repin
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
- Marcelin Berthelot
- Mikhail Butlerov
- Nikolay Zinin
Thomas Edison
The prolific Edison invented the phonograph, popularised electric light, and (among much else) founded the world’s first industrial research lab. Acheson, Dickson, Hammer and Tesla all worked with or under him, though he never appreciated Tesla’s genius. Marey’s meeting with him helped inspire the kinetoscope, while Muybridge’s led to the first ever moving image with sound (Muybridge despairing at its crudeness). Eastman and Edison clashed over X-rays but successfully collaborated on photographic and movie technology. Edison ignored his family and had few friends, though Eastman and Ford became close.
Thomas Edison knew…
- William Crookes
- Nikola Tesla
- Gustave Eiffel
- Hermann von Helmholtz
- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
- George Eastman
- Henry Draper
- Christopher Sholes
- E. G. Acheson
- Eadweard Muybridge
- Henry Ford
- William Dickson
- William J. Hammer
- Étienne-Jules Marey
Alexander Graham Bell
Bell wasn’t the sole inventor of the telephone, but was the first to get it working effectively, and was a famous teacher of the deaf. His father took him, aged 15, to meet Wheatstone, a pivotal moment. Henry encouraged his sound-transmission experiments. Gray competed with him, accusing him of stealing his design, but in letters acknowledged Bell’s own prior work. Bell demonstrated his invention to Thomson, giving him some sets. Generous with money, he helped fund Michelson’s research. De Candolle, James, Draper, Longfellow, Holmes and Marconi — whom he invited to visit — were among his correspondents.
Alexander Graham Bell knew…
- Cleveland Abbe
- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
- Alphonse de Candolle
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- William James
- Joseph Henry
- Daniel Draper
- Charles Wheatstone
- Albert Michelson
- Elisha Gray
- Guglielmo Marconi
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
Robert Fulton
Fulton, equally entrepreneurial and practical, was a pioneer of steam navigation and of the submarine. He studied painting in London with West. Becoming interested in canal projects, he met Watt, and in Manchester also met Owen (who fruitlessly backed his mechanical-excavation scheme), Dalton and Coleridge. In France he met Paine (another with a good practical imagination), Carnot (who tried to interest the French navy in his submarine) and Bossut (whose hydrodynamic researches helped his steamboat designs). Franklin had been a friend in Philadelphia. Boulton was met only once, on steam-engine business.
Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring
Blumenbach (a real friend) and Lichtenberg taught Sömmerring; Heyne was another long-term Göttingen connection. His work on cranial nerves as a 23-year-old remains valid, two centuries later. Sömmerring met Forster (becoming close friends) and Hunter in London, and Camper in Friesland. Forster, now in Kassel, arranged a professorship in anatomy for him there (they later fell out as neighbours in Mainz). Sömmerring got to know his lifelong correspondent Goethe through a shared interest in comparative anatomy, and famously sent him an elephant’s skull. Kant, ignoring its philosophical discrepancies, wrote an afterword for his essay on the soul.
Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring knew…
- John Hunter
- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach
- Petrus Camper
- Immanuel Kant
- Christian Gottlob Heyne
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- Alexander von Humboldt
- Georges Cuvier
- Friedrich Hölderlin
- Friedrich Schelling
- Johann Gottfried Herder
- Wilhelm von Humboldt
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- Georg Forster
- Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi
- Joseph Fraunhofer
Carl Auer von Welsbach
Auer von Welsbach is known for his isolation of new chemical elements, his work with rare earths, and his production of radically-improved gas-mantles, lighter-flints and light-bulbs. He did his doctoral research under Bunsen and Kirchhoff at Heidelberg; following Bunsen’s death, he acquired his library. Aston and Rutherford were among his correspondents; he sent Rutherford radioactive isotopes to experiment with.
Carl Auer von Welsbach knew…
- Gustav Kirchhoff
- Ernest Rutherford
- Robert Wilhelm Bunsen
- Francis William Aston