History

In 1748, Johann Andreas Von Segner started giving Chemistry experimental lectures at the University of Göttingen. It took over 30 years until Johann Friedrich Gmelin (1775-1804) built the first chemistry laboratory at Hospitalstraße 7, which is still there. A colleague of Gmelin, the physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg called such half-timbered houses, which are typical in Göttingen, "stakes with doors and windows". The laboratory was in the same building as Gmelin's appartment. It is no wonder that his son Leopold shared his passion for Chemistry, he later became a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Heidelberg and founded the famous "Gmelins Handbook of Inorganic Chemistry". more...