Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein

Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein was a German-born medical doctor, physicist and engineer, born in Wernigerode in 1723 and died in Copenhagen in 1795. He studied physics and medicine at Halle, took doctorates in both in 1746, and was called to the science academy in Saint Petersburg in 1748. In 1753 he became professor of experimental physics and medicine at the University of Copenhagen, where he served as rector four times. He is especially known for his investigations of the use of electricity in medicine and for the first attempts at mechanical speech synthesis, and he wrote the first textbook on experimental physics in Denmark-Norway. His lectures ranged across plants and animals, geology, physiology, physics and chemistry. At his death he left 12,000 riksdaler to the university, a fund that later helped Hans Christian Ørsted set up his own laboratory for physical experiments.