| Heinrich Kayser | |
| Birth Name: | Heinrich Gustav Johannes Kayser |
| Birth Date: | 1853 3, df=y |
| Birth Place: | Bingen am Rhein |
| Death Place: | Bonn |
| Citizenship: | German |
| Field: | Physicist, Spectroscopy |
| Work Institutions: | Technische Hochschule, Hannover University of Bonn |
| Alma Mater: | Sophie Gymnasium (Berlin) University of Strasbourg University of Berlin |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Wilhelm Röntgen |
| Known For: | Helium in the Earth's atmosphere, spectra, kayser unit |
| Prizes: | ForMemRS[1] |
Heinrich Gustav Johannes Kayser ForMemRS[1] (pronounced as /de/; 16 March 1853 – 14 October 1940) was a German physicist and spectroscopist.[2]
Kayser was born at Bingen am Rhein. Kayser's early work was concerned with the characteristics of acoustic waves.[3] He discovered the occurrence of helium in the Earth's atmosphere in 1868 during a solar eclipse when he detected a new spectral line in the solar spectrum. In 1881, Kayser coined the word “adsorption”. Together with Carl Runge, he examined the spectra of chemical elements.[4] [5] [6] In 1905, he wrote a paper on electron theory.[7]
The kayser unit, associated with wavenumber, of the CGS system was named after him. He died at Bonn in 1940.