Goldschmidt, Victor

(b. Mainz, Germany, 10 February 1853; d Salzburg, Austria, 8 May 1933)

crystallography, harmonics.

Born to a well-to-do family, Goldschmidt attended the Gymnasium in Mainz. He then entered the Freiberg Bergakademie and, after graduating, stayed on as an instructor in metallurgy, assaying, and blowpipe analysis under H. T. Richter (1875–1878). For graduate and research work he went to the universities of Munich, Prague, and Heidelberg; at the latter he obtained his Ph.D. under K. H. F. Rosenbusch in 1880, with a dissertation entitled “Ueber Verwendbarkeit einer Kaliumquecksilberjodidlösung bei mineralogischen und petrographischen Untersuchungen”; it concerned the determination of the specific gravity of minerals, a topic to which he returned in later papers.

From 1882 to 1887 Goldschmidt was at the University of Vienna; and these years, especially the work with Aristedes Brezina, appear to have determined his life work. From Vienna he returned to Heidelberg, where in February 1888 he submitted” Ueber Projection und graphische Kristallberechnung” as a Habilitationsschrift for a post in Rosenbusch’s institute.

Also in 1888 Goldschmidt married Leontine von Portheim and settled in Heidelberg. His wife brought as a dowry a substantial part of the wealth which enabled him to work with little help from the university; she was also a very understanding companion who provided a homelike atmosphere for many of his co-workers and students. Except for a long journey to the Far East in 1894–1895 he spent almost all of his time in Heidelberg. In 1893 Goldschmidt was named associate professor, and somewhat later he became an honorary full professor. In 1916 he and his wife established the Eduard und Josefine von Portheim Stiftung, of which the Victor-Goldschmidt-Institut für Kristallforschung was a part.

Together with E. S. Fyodorov in St. Petersburg and Paul von Groth in Munich, Goldschmidt was the founder of modern crystallography. Until then that science’s methods and mode of thought adhered rigidly to a purely geometric vision of crystals, with little or no interest in the physicochemical meaning of the wealth of geometric observations. The work of these three men opened the way and created the methods for Max von Laue’s discovery of X-ray diffraction and for the discovery of the principles of crystal chemistry by Aleksandr Fersman, Victor Moritz, Goldschmidt, and Paul Niggli.

Goldschmidt’s contribution centered mainly on a complete indexing and recording of mineral crystal forms, the final aim being to link these external variations of form to the physicochemical variations of composition and of physicochemical factors present during formation. He realized the vastness of the task and was pleased that he accomplished the mapping of most of the crystal forms available during his lifetime. The second sine qua non was his great skill in teaching and the enthusiasm he created in his students. Many students from various countries worked with him, including Fersman, William Nicol, Charles Palache, Friedrich Kolbeck, M. A. Peacock, and Ludwig Milch.

Goldschmidt’s outstanding works form a sort of trilogy: Index der Kristallformen der Mineralien (1886–1891), Kristallographische Winkeltabellen (1897), and Atlas der Kristallformen (1913–1923). These works are a foundation of crystallography and are essential to much crystallographic work even today. They and the more than 100 papers on individual crystal forms or groups required the improvement of traditional methods, which were entirely inadequate, and the creation of new ones. Consequently, part of Goldschmidt’s contribution to crystallography consisted of improvement of existing instruments and invention of new ones. The most important was the construction of the two-circle goniometer. His work required a great number of crystal models and much cutting and oriented polishing. In this work he was assisted by the skilled mechanic Stoe. Goldschmidt wrote many instruction booklets on the new methods and instruments. For about forty years—until he was past seventy-five—he taught courses in measurement and calculation of crystals, determinative mineralogy, and blowpipe analysis.

Other methods improved or initiated by Goldschmidt are the Goldschmidt symbols, the gnomonic projection, use of the position angles ? and ? (borrowed from astronomy) to characterize crystal forms, the recognition of the importance of zones, and the mathematical periodicity of zone symbols from 0 to ? to a maximum number in the Normalreihe III:

Goldschmidt defined the task of crystallography in the first volume of the Index (1886) and made the definition the program for his own work in crystallography: “The main purpose of crystallography is to explore the molecular structures of solid substances and to determine the intensity of molecular forces and their manner of operation.” Later in the Index he wrote: “Every surface is crystallographically possible, the perpendicular is the direction of molecular attraction.” Thus, Goldschmidt hoped to gain insight into the atomic or molecular bond relations within the lattice, through the crystal form as the product of bond strength and bond direction. For his time this was most certainly an ingenious approach. As soon as X rays were applied to bond relations, the results confirmed most of Goldschmidt’s findings.

But Goldschmidt was not satisfied with the geometric approach alone. He wanted to test the results by trying out the forces opposed to those active in crystal growth: he etched and dissolved crystals and compared the results. The statistical and geometric part of this work was excellent proof for his goniometrical work. But when attempting to interpret the resulting micromorphology dynamically, he made the mistake of applying analogies from erosion on the earth’s surface. This revealed a weakness in his thinking: a rock is an aggregate and is subject to statistical laws different from those of the crystal lattice. Interest in intergrowth and related problems had not yet arisen. If it had—and if modern knowledge of phases and modern statistics had been available—an association of Goldschmidt and Rosenbusch would have been immensely fruitful. But such knowledge was not available; and, in addition, these men had very different personalities which would not allow a close friendship and cooperation.

Goldschmidt’s work on “crystal forms and on the forces active in the dissolution of crystals led him to extensive investigations of twinning, surface symmetries, accessories and vicinals, oblique surfaces, and multiple twinning; and the foundations were laid for the understanding of epitaxial overgrowth as a phenomenon related to, unmixing or exsolution.

Among the monographs on individual crystal forms, the one on diamond written with Fersman is worthy of special mention. Fersman, who studied for almost two years with Goldschmidt, wrote in his obituary of the latter: “The three works, Index, Winkeltabellen, and Atlas, are henceforth basic materials for the study of crystals. Without them it is impossible to do crystallographic work. They translate the work of a complete century into a new language... the language of new, great ideas in... contemporary crystal chemistry....”

Goldschmidt could not split himself into a scientific and a general personality; both parts of his life had to be a unit originating from the same source. Therefore his crystallographic thought—at least its pattern—extended, for him, without a break into the other domains of his personality: the aesthetic, the ethical, and perhaps the religious. Consequently he found excellent correspondence of the harmonic series of crystals with that in music, in fine arts, and with traits of human life in general. Attempts at such integrations were Goldschmidt’s favorite philosophic themes and formed the subjects of some of his articles and books: Ueber Harmonie und Complication (1901), “Ueber harmonische Analyse von Musikstücken” (Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 3 [1904]), “Ueber Harmonie in Weltraum” (ibid., 5 ), “Beiträge zur Harmonielehre” (ibid., 13 [1917]), and “Materialien zur Musiklehre” (Heidelberger Akten der von-Portheim-Stiftung, nos. 5, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15 [1923–1925]). These works showed that for Goldschmidt harmonic properties and symmetries occurred in all domains of human endeavor as a sort of pantheistic or mystic substratum. In the terms of his contemporary, C. G. Jung, these harmonic series and their ascending and descending differentiations (“complications”) were archetypal properties of life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Himmel’s bibliography (see below) lists 180 articles or books, but this figure does not include numerous smaller articles and reviews. Goldschmidt’s major works are Index der Kristallformen der Mineralien, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1886–1891); Ueber Projektion und graphische Kristallberechnung (Berlin, 1887); Kristallographische Winkeltabellen (Berlin, 1897); Ueber Harmonie und Complication (Berlin, 1901); Der Diamant, eine Studie (Heidelberg, 1911), written with A. Fersman; Atlas der Kristallformen, 9 vols. (Heidelberg, 1913–1923); and Farben in der Kunst (Heidelberg, 1919). In addition, Goldschmidt was founder of Beiträge zur Krystallographie und Mineralogie, of which he was editor from 1914 to 1926, and of the Heidelberger Akten der von-Portheim-Stiftung (1922).

II. Seconoary Literature. See A. E. Fersman, “Victor Goldschmidt (10. February 1853 bis 8. Mai 1933),” in Fortschritte der Mineralogie, 37 , no. 2 (1959), 207–212, originally in Reports of the Mineralogical Society of the USSR, 87 , no. 6 (1958), 677; F. Herrmann, “Victor Goldschmidt,” in Neue deuische Biographic, v ol. VI (1964); Hans Himmel, “Victor Goldschmidt zum Gedächtnis,” in Zentralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Palüontologie, sec. A (1933), 391–398; L. Milch, “Zum 75. Geburtstage von Victor Goldschmidt,” in Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstage von semen Schülern und Freunden gewidmet (Heidelberg, 1928); and P. Ramdohr, “Zum 100. Geburtstag von Victor Goldschmidt,” in Ruperto-Carola, 5 , nos. 9-10 (1953), 160–161.

G. C. Amstutz