Otto von Guericke

Guericke was born into a patrician family of the city of Magdeburg in the Holy Roman Empire.

Guericke studied law at Leipzig and Jena and then mathematics and fortification engineering at Leiden, completing his education with travels in France and England.

When imperial troops destroyed Magdeburg during the Thirty Years' War, Guericke escaped with his family, losing his property in one of the war's worst massacres.

Guericke became one of the four mayors of Magdeburg, an office he held for around thirty years while representing the city in diplomatic missions.

Guericke built the first air pump capable of evacuating a sealed vessel, using it to investigate the properties of the vacuum.

Before Emperor Ferdinand III at Regensburg, Guericke showed that teams of horses could not pull apart two evacuated copper hemispheres held together only by atmospheric pressure.

Guericke constructed a rotating sulphur globe that produced static electricity when rubbed, one of the earliest electrical machines.

Guericke's major work, Experimenta Nova (ut vocantur) Magdeburgica de Vacuo Spatio, described his vacuum experiments and his views on space and the cosmos.

In his final years Guericke left Magdeburg to live with his son in Hamburg, partly to escape an outbreak of plague.

Guericke died in Hamburg at the age of 83; his body was returned to Magdeburg for burial.