Lambert, Johann Heinrich

Biography

Lambert was born on August 26, 1728 in the city of Mulhouse, then an enclave of Switzerland (now part of France). He was largely self-educated, going to school only until age 12. By age 17 he assumed the job of secretary to a newspaper publisher in nearby Basel, Switzerland. He also began to work as a private tutor. At age 20 he became tutor to three boys in the family of Count Peter von Salis in Chur, Switzerland, a position he held for 10 years. There he had access to the count’s large library and was able to travel widely in Europe with his charges. In 1755 he began to publish scientific articles on a number of subjects. In 1756 he traveled with his pupils to Göttingen in Germany where he met Tobias Mayer and was elected a member of the Königliche Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (Royal Society for the Sciences). In 1759 he published his work on light measurement, Photometria [1], introducing his mathematical formula for the law of absorption of light (Lambert’s law),...