Lichtenberg

Lichtenberg, GEORG CHRISTOPH, physicist and satirist, was born on 1st July 1742, at Oberramstädt near Darmstadt, and educated at Göttingen, where he held the chair of Mathematics from 1770 till within a few years of his death, on 24th February 1799. Two visits to England (1769 and 1774) inspired him with a love for things English; he had a great admiration for Garrick, and wrote a witty commentary on Hogarth's copperplates, Ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche (1794 et seq.). In Germany he enjoys a high reputation as a satirist, Lavater being an especial sufferer at his hands. All his writings were desultory and occasional, and mostly semi-philosophical in spirit; they show a keen insight into human nature. The best collected edition is that by his sons, 14 vols. 1844-53. See Grisebach's Gedanken und Maximen aus Lichtenberg's Schriften (with biography, 1871), and Meyer's comparative study of Swift and Lichtenberg (1886).