author
Josef Bersch
1840–1907
A Viennese chemist and teacher, he wrote practical scientific books that opened up the worlds of pigments, industrial materials, and wine to working readers. His work has the clear, hands-on feel of someone who knew both the laboratory and the classroom.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Vienna on August 22, 1840, Josef Bersch was an Austrian scientist, chemist, and teacher. Reference works also connect him with philosophy, but the clearest picture is of a practical scholar: he studied at the University of Vienna, worked in the university’s chemical laboratory, and later taught at the Landes-Oberrealgymnasium in Baden near Vienna.
Bersch became known for writing technical books that made specialized knowledge usable. His surviving works include books on pigments and industrial materials, such as The Manufacture of Mineral and Lake Pigments and The Manufacture of Earth Colours. Sources on wine history also note that, while teaching in Baden, he developed a strong interest in viticulture and oenology.
He died on March 13, 1907, in Baden bei Wien. Today, he is remembered less as a literary figure than as a gifted explainer of applied science—an author whose books were meant to help readers understand how things were actually made.