Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/418

402 father was, at the beginning of his career, a lawyer; in due course of time he rose to the position of judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal, and has now been for a number of years a senator of the free city of Hamburg. The childhood of Prof. Hertz was subject to every pure, healthful, and elevating influence that a highly capable father and a superior mother can exercise. Both of them gave a great part of their time to their children; their eldest boy especially enjoyed the advantage of their companionship in many a holiday's ramble through the green fields and woods, and in cozy winter nights spent in reading Homer, the German classics, and other books.

In passing through the high-school classes of his native city, his predilection for the study of natural science early asserted itself. Whenever a new course of study began and a new textbook was put into the hands of the class, the boy would devote every leisure moment to the perusal of the volume, experimenting frequently with apparatus made by himself, and never ceasing until he could tell his father, “I have mastered that book.” This statement always proved to be perfectly correct. In spite of his decided gift for natural science. Hertz chose as his vocation civil engineering. But when, after completing his studies, he came to take the first steps toward the practical execution of this design, he felt that his choice had been a mistake. His parents, with a ready perception of the deeply rooted needs of his strong and peculiar nature, whose desires they would not think of thwarting, entered into his new idea, gave him their approval, and furnished him with the necessary means. So he set out on a new course of studies in mathematics and natural science. He gave himself up to this work heart and soul, and for a number of years knew no other object in life but unceasing and unrelenting hard work. He studied physics at Munich and Berlin, and enjoyed the warm regard of Prof. Helmholtz. In 1880 he became his assistant, and, at his instigation, in 1883 settled down as a “Privatdocent,” or professor without salary at the University of Kiel. It was from this time on that he made the science of electricity the one great object of his researches, the main pursuit of his life. The first years were filled with investigations relating to electric discharges, etc. He busied himself, above all, with the new conceptions of the inner mechanism of electric phenomena, and of the connection between these and the phenomena of light and of radiant heat. These conceptions, originating with Faraday and Maxwell in England and represented in Germany by Helmholtz, were now carried forward by Prof. Hertz.

His reputation soon spread through his native country and he was in 1885 called to the Polytechnic School of Karlsruhe, which for various reasons became very dear to him. One of its