Karl Kreil und der Erdmagnetismus

Karl Kreil (1798–1862), astronomer, meteorologist, and geomagneticist, was a scientist in Austria whose work deserves particular attention. He was the founder of the K. K. Central-Anstalt für Meteorologie und Erdmagnetismus in Vienna, which still exists today, though the name has been modified slightly to Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG). Born in Ried in Upper Austria, Kreil received his first relevant scientific education in the convent of Kremsmünster. During the years 1819 to 1821 he studied law and sciences at the University of Vienna; in 1827 he became the assistant at the observatory in Vienna, where Joseph Johann Littrow was the head. In 1831 he obtained a position at the Brera Observatory in Milan, followed seven years later by one at the observatory in Prague, and in 1851 in Vienna at the Central-Anstalt, which he himself had founded. Worldwide research in geomagnetism was originally supported especially in Great Britain and in Russia. In Austria it was Karl Kreil who initiated the first systematic geomagnetic observations; these began in Milan in 1835, and in Prague in 1838. The observatories of these two cities became members of the Göttinger Magnetischer Verein, which had been founded by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber in 1834. From 1852 Kreil continued his geomagnetic observations in Vienna. The focus of the present monograph is on Karl Kreil as geophysicist and his research on geomagnetism. The correspondence exchanged between Gauss in Göttingen and Kreil plays a major role. It allows a detailed insight into Kreil’s geomagnetic observations and research, as well as into the relationship between the two scientists. 31 letters and 24 protocols of observations written between the years 1835 and 1843 have been preserved. The authors of the book present an edition of this material as well as of other unpublished documents in a broad context of history of science.