Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Kohlrausch (14 October 1840 – 17 January 1910) was a German physicist who investigated the conductive properties of electrolytes and contributed to knowledge of their behaviour. He also investigated elasticity, thermoelasticity, and thermal conduction as well as magnetic and electrical precision measurements. Nowadays, Friedrich Kohlrausch is classed as one of the most important experimental physicists. His early work helped to extend the absolute system of Carl Friedrich Gauss and Wilhelm Weber to include electrical and magnetic measuring units. Biography Education Son of Rudolf Kohlrausch, Friedrich Wilhelm Georg Kohlrausch was born on October 14, 1840, in Rinteln, Germany. After studying physics at Erlangen and Göttingen, Friedrich Kohlrausch completed his doctorate in Göttingen. Teaching After a two-year work as a lecturer in Frankfurt, Kohlrausch was appointed a professor of physics at the University of Göttingen (1866–70). During 1870 Kohlrausch became a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland. One year later, he moved to the Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany. In 1875, he responded to an offer from the University of Würzburg in southern Germany, where he subsequently conducted his experiments in quantity determination and the conductivity of electrolytes. From 1888 he researched and taught at Strasbourg University. He refused a professorship at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1894, but from 1900 he was also a professor there. He was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences during 1902. Research work Kohlrausch was an important researcher of electrochemistry for many reasons. First, the experiments from which he deduced his law of independent migration of ions became canonical and disseminated from Kohlrausch's laboratories in Göttingen, Zurich, and Darmstadt; Svante Arrhenius, Wilhelm Ostwald and Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, the original Ionists, all trained with methods and equipment of Kohlrauschian lineage. Moreover, because Kohlrausch also continued to test and confirm the Ionist theory after it had been first proposed, his work tied "measuring physics" and its consequent capability of producing plenty of empirical data to the results and methods of the Ionists and their devotees. Electrolyte conductivity in solution In 1874 he demonstrated that an electrolyte has a definite and constant amount of electrical resistance. By observing the dependence of conductivity upon dilution, he could determine the transfer velocities of the ions (charged atoms or molecules) in solution. He used alternating current to prevent the formation of electrolysis products ( and gas evolution, or metal deposition); this