NAUMANN, KARL FRIEDRICH

(b. Dresden, Germany, 30 May 1797; d. Dresden, 26 November 1873)

mineralogy, geology.

Naumann discovered tetartohedrism in the isometric, tetragonal, and hexagonal crystal systems and was the first to observe hemimorphism. His Lehrbuch der Geognosie (1850–1854) was the most authoritative work on petrography in the mid-nineteenth century and served as a standard textbook for decades.

Naumann’s father, Johann Gottlieb, was a noted composer of church music. In 1816 Naumann went to the mining academy at Freiberg to study mineralogy under Werner. After Werner’s death in 1817, Naumann continued his education at Leipzig and at Jena, where he received his doctorate in 1819. During 1821 and 1822 he traveled in Norway observing its geology and collecting minerals. In 1823 he became a Privatdozent at Jena, in 1824 a Dozent at Leipzig, and in 1826 he was named professor of crystallography at Freiberg. His first book, Beiträge zur Kenntnis Norwegens (1824), described his observations in Norway. In 1825 he published his Grundriss der Krystallographie, in which he introduced the concept of a “crystal series,”that is, the aggregate of all crystal forms that can be developed from a basic form in accordance with Weiss’s law of zones (the law of rational intercepts). In this work also Naumann examined Mohs’s 1822 suggestion that crystal systems might exist in which the crystallographic axes are not mutually perpendic- ular and successfully identified the present monoclinic system. His Lehrbuch der reinen und angewandten Krystallographie (1830) was even more important in that Naumann introduced a novel method for the designation and treatment of crystal forms, which greatly simplified and coordinated those of Weiss and Mohs and which was adopted almost immedi- ately by German crystallographers. Naumann also analyzed the tetragonal system in this work and commenced an examination of the incomplete sym- metry of some crystals, which led to many published descriptions of tetartohedrism and hemimorphism.

Although Naumann continued to write on crystal- lography, his central interest turned to geognosy, In 1835 he was named professor of geognosy at Freiberg, and in 1842 he became professor of mineralogy and geognosy at Leipzig. His 1846 Elemente der Mineralogie, which successfully coordinated the systems of Mohs and Berzelius, went to fifteen editions, seven of them posthumous.

Naumann’s most important work was his Lehrbuch der Geognosie. In it he differentiated rocks primarily according to their origin, which he determined from their texture, for example, crystalline, clastic, and hyaline. He supported the theory that most gneisses and schists had been formed from sedimentary rocks but admitted that some gneisses had been produced by the deformation of igneous rocks. The first text to devote considerable space to tectonics, his Lehrbuch contained all of the scientific information known about earthquakes at that time. Naumann held that certain earthquakes occurred independently of any volcanic activity and might therefore be termed “plutonic.”This view was in opposition to that of Humboldt, who believed earthquakes and volcanoes to be merely different manifestations of the same causes.

Late in life, Naumann’s proficiency in mathematics led him to the study of symmetry in plants and conch shells. In 1872 he retired from his chair at Leipzig and returned to Dresden, where he died the following year. He was a corresponding member of the acad- emies of Berlin, Munich, St. Petersburg, and Paris, of the Royal Society of London and of the American Philosophical Society, and he received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1865.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Naumann’s principal works are Beiträge zur Kenntnis Norwegens, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1824); De granite juxta calcem transitorium posito (Jena, 1823); De hexagonali crystallinarium formarum systemate (Leipzig, 1824); Grundriss der Krystallographie (Leipzig, 1825); Entwurf der Lithurgik oder ökonomischen Mineralogie (Leipzig, 1826); Lehrbuch der Mineralogie (Leipzig, 1828); Lehrbuch der reinen und angewandten Krystallographie, 2 vols, (Leipzig, 1830); Geognostische Beschreibung des Königreiches Sachsen, 5 vols. (Dresden-Leipzig, 1834- 1844), written with B. von Cotta; Anfangsgründe der Krystallographie (Dresden-Leipzig, 1841); Elemente der Mineralogie (Leipzig, 1846); Lehrbuch der Geognosie, 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1850–1854); Elemente der theoretischen Krystallographie (Leipzig, 1856); Geognostische Be- schreibung des Kohlenbassins von Flöha (Leipzig, 1864); and Geognostische Karte des erzgebirgschen Bassins (Leipzig, 1866). He published about 100 scientific articles; see Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers, IV, 576–578; VIII, 484.

II. Secondary Literature. See Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, XXIII, 316–319; H. B. Geinetz, “Zur Erinnerung an Dr. Carl Friedrich Naumann,”in Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie for 1874, p. 147; and Franz von Kobell, “Nekrolog auf Dr. K. F. Naumann,”in Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Mümchen, Math.-phys. KI., for 1874, pp. 81–84.

John G. Burke