author
Johann Jakob Balmer
1825–1898
Best remembered for the formula that revealed a hidden pattern in hydrogen’s spectral lines, this Swiss mathematician helped open the door to modern atomic science. Much of his career was spent teaching, but one elegant insight made his name last.
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by Theodor Meyer-Merian, Johann Jakob Balmer
About the author
Born in Lausen, Switzerland, on May 1, 1825, Johann Jakob Balmer studied mathematics in Basel, Karlsruhe, and Berlin, and earned his doctorate from the University of Basel in 1849. He later taught in Basel, including many years at a girls' school, and was known as a careful, thoughtful teacher as well as a mathematician.
Balmer is most famous for a paper published in 1885, when he described a simple numerical formula for the visible spectral lines of hydrogen. That pattern, now called the Balmer series, became an important step toward the development of atomic theory and spectroscopy.
He died in Basel on March 12, 1898. Though he did not publish a large body of scientific work, the clarity and lasting importance of his best-known discovery gave him a permanent place in the history of science.