On January 5, 1845, the Prussian cultural minister received a
request by a group of six young men to form a new Physical
Society in Berlin. In fields from thermodynamics, mechanics, and
electromagnetism to animal electricity, ophthalmology, and
psychophysics, members of this small but growing group—which soon
included Emil Du Bois-Reymond, Ernst Brücke, Werner Siemens, and
Hermann von Helmholtz—established leading positions in what...
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