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Johann Heinrich Lambert (1728–1777)
Lambert, Johann Heinrich (läm’bert). A distinguished German philosopher and scientist; born at Mühlhausen, Alsace, Aug. 26, 1728; died at Berlin, Sept. 25, 1777. He was entirely self-educated. At sixteen he calculated the period of the comet of 1744, according to the “Lambertine theorem.” His masterpiece in philosophy is the ‘New Organon, or Thoughts upon the Research of Truth’ (2 vols., 1764); in physics he laid the foundations of photometry, pyrometry, and hygrometry; in his ‘Cosmological Letters’ (1761) he sets forth the views still held by astronomers regarding the nature of the fixed stars; not less important are his researches in pure mathematics.