Justus von Liebig

Brock, William H.

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-58718-4

Cited by 25 publications

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“…Justus Liebig (1803–1870) was one of the foremost chemists during the 1800s (Partington 1964:294–317, Holmes 1973, Brock 1997, Finlay 2000). He was the son of a chemist in Darmstadt who made drugs, dyes, and paints.…”

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“…Alexander von Humboldt intervened to make peace between him and botanists Jacob Mathias Schleiden (1804–1881) and von Mohl (Werner 2001, Werner and Holmes 2002). Liebig mounted the most devastating attack yet on vitalism and the humus theory of plant nutrition (Waksman 1942, Brock 1997:147). Although he understood that atmospheric nitrogen was unavailable to plants, he found ammonia in rainwater and concluded that atmospheric ammonia via rain was a sufficient source for plants (Brock 1997:159), and he thought that the value of fertilizers was in their mineral, not nitrogen, content.…”

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“…Liebig mounted the most devastating attack yet on vitalism and the humus theory of plant nutrition (Waksman 1942, Brock 1997:147). Although he understood that atmospheric nitrogen was unavailable to plants, he found ammonia in rainwater and concluded that atmospheric ammonia via rain was a sufficient source for plants (Brock 1997:159), and he thought that the value of fertilizers was in their mineral, not nitrogen, content. However, Boussingault made exhaustive measurements of rainwater in 1853–1854, showing that the amount of ammonia in rainwater was very small compared to the needs of plants (Aulie 1970 b :456–457).…”

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“…Furthermore, John Bennet Lawes II (1814–1900) and Joseph Henry Gilbert (1817–1901), at the Rothamsted Experimental Station in England conducted a 12‐year controversy with Liebig (despite Gilbert having received his Ph.D under Liebig) that led by 1855 to their showing that Liebig's mineral theory was wrong and that Boussingault's more balanced views on importance of minerals and nitrogen in fertilizer were correct (Aulie 1970 b :454, 1974, Farrar 1973, Brock 1997:173, Finlay 2004 b , Thompson 2004). Lawes inherited the Rothamsted estate at age eight.…”

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“…The first German edition of Liebig's Organic Chemistry in Its Applications to Agriculture and Chemistry 1840 had 195 pages; the seventh edition (1862), 1130 pages. Although its length had increased in earlier editions, the seventh edition was revised and expanded to improve Liebig's standing on this subject after much criticism (Finlay 1991, Brock 1997:177–179).…”

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History of Ecological Sciences, Part 43: Plant Physiology, 1800s

Egerton¹

2012

Bulletin Ecologic Soc America

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Plant geography and plant physiology were two foundations upon which plant ecology arose during the later 1800s. Plant geographers Alexander von Humboldt, Hewett Watson, Joseph Hooker, and de Candolle, father and son, were discussed in previous parts of this history. Building on the outstanding experimental studies on plant growth conducted during the 1700s, and on Antoine Lavoisier's chemical revolution, botanists, agronomists, and chemists established a flourishing plant physiology during the 1800s. Scientists in Britain, France, Germany, and Switzerland led the way.Two poorly developed theories accepted at the beginning of the 1800s, humus as fertilizer and vitalism, became discredited during the 1800s. Humus was disintegrated plant matter, which varied in composition from place to place, intermixed with topsoil. It was different from animal manure, though both seemed to have similar effects. There was a long tradition of using humus as fertilizer.

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