Oskar Emil Meyer (15 October 1834, Varel - 21 April 1909, Breslau) was a German physicist best known for his studies on the viscosity of gases. He was a younger brother to chemist Lothar von Meyer.
From 1854 he studied sciences at the universities of Heidelberg, Zurich and Königsberg, where he was a student of Franz Ernst Neumann. In 1860 he received his doctorate with a dissertation on the friction between two liquids, titled De mutua duorum fluidorum frictione. In 1864 he succeeded Rudolf Lipschitz as an associate professor at the University of Breslau - teaching classes in mathematics and mathematical physics. During the following year he became a full professor at Breslau, and in 1867 succeeded Moritz Ludwig Frankenheim as director of the Physics Cabinet.[1]
In 1899 his influential Die kinetische Theorie der Gase. In elementarer Darstellung mit mathematischen Zusätzen was translated into English and published with the title "The kinetic theory of gases; elementary treatise with mathematical appendices".[2] His other noteworthy written efforts are: