Biography of johann heinrich schulze

German professor and polymath

Johann Heinrich Schulze (12 May 1687 – 10 October 1744) was a German professor and polymath.

History

Schulze studied medicine, chemistry, philosophy and theology and became a professor in Altdorf and Halle for anatomy and several other subjects.

Notable discoveries

Schulze is best known for his discovery that the darkening in sunlight of various substances mixed with silver nitrate is due to the light, not the heat as other experimenters believed, and for using the phenomenon to temporarily capture shadows.^[1]

Schulze's experiments with silver nitrate were undertaken in about 1717.^[2] He found that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver had been dissolved was darkened by sunlight, but not by exposure to the heat from a fire.

To provide an interesting demonstration of its darkening by light, he applied stencils of words to a bottle filled with the mixture and put it in direct