Georg Wilhelm Richmann

Georg Wilhelm Richmann, a Baltic German physicist working in Russia, made early advances in the study of electricity, atmospheric electricity, and calorimetry. He is best remembered for deriving the first general formula for calorimetric calculations—now called Richmann's law—and for becoming the first person on record to die from an electrical experiment. That death occurred in St. Petersburg when a lightning strike from a storm, which he was trying to ground through an insulated rod, hit him.

Richmann was born in Pernau, Livonia (in what is now Estonia), on 22 July 1711. His father died of plague before he was born, and his mother later remarried. He studied in Reval (modern Tallinn) and then at the universities of Halle and Jena in Germany. After finishing his education, he spent the rest of his career as a physics professor at the university in St. Petersburg and as a researcher at the Academy of Sciences there. His work on thermodynamics and electrical phenomena ran parallel to that of Benjamin Franklin. He also served as a tutor to the children of Count Andrei Osterman and, in 1741, translated Alexander Pope’s *Essay on Man* into German from a French version. That same year he was elected to the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.

On 6 August 1753, Richmann was at an Academy meeting when he heard thunder. He rushed home with his engraver to document the storm. During the experiment, a discharge—reported as ball lightning—struck his head, leaving a red mark on his forehead, blowing open his left shoe, and singeing parts of his clothes. The explosion that followed sounded like a small cannon, knocked the engraver unconscious, split the door frame, and tore the door off its hinges. This event is the first documented case of ball lightning, and Richmann became the first person known to die while conducting electrical experiments.