‘Reichenbach’ and ‘Brezina’ lamellae in meteoritic irons

Abstract

Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbaeh (1788-1869) was born at Stuttgart, ennobled in 1839 by the King of Wiirttemberg, and died at Leipzig. But he spent most of his life in Austria, where he had iron works and estates in Moravia and Galicia and a castle near Vienna. Earning a livelihood as a copyist in the state archives, he was able to obtain a university education, and he started his career as a works chemist. He produced many papers on the distillation products of coal, tar, oil, &c, and was the discoverer of creosote and solid paraffin. He gained considerable notoriety with his ideas and books on what he called 'od' or 'odylic force', a combination of animal magnetism, light, heat, force of crystallization, &c., capable of producing hypnotism. The fall in 1833 of a shower of meteorites, which he witnessed near his works at Blansko in Moravia, fired his intense enthusiasm for the subject of meteorites, on which he wrote 29 scientific papers (1835—65) and many newspaper articles.