Mohr

mor, Karl Friedrich (1806-1879), a German philosopher. He was the son of a prosperous druggist of Coblenz. He studied chemistry at Heidelberg, Berlin, and Bonn. He succeeded his father in business, yet retired in middle life and became a professor of pharmacy in the University of Bonn. He is described as a man of winning manners, fond of music and poetry, devoted to his family. He had the misfortune, however, to antagonize not only the authorities of the church, but leading scientific men. Though one of the foremost scientists of the day, he received little credit from his contemporaries. His name is known now only to the historian of science. As early as 1837 he published a paper, Concerning the Nature of Heat, in which the following remarkable sentences appear: "Besides the fifty-four known chemical elements there is in the physical world one agent only, and this is called energy. It may appear according to circumstances as motion, chemical affinity, cohesion, electricity, light and magnetism, and from any one of these forms it can be transformed into any of the others." This enunciation attracted no attention at the time, but it is now recognized clearly as the doctrine, nothing less, of the conservation of energy.