Akademos: Revista de Ştiinţă, Inovare, Cultură şi Artă (Oct 2017)
USTUS VON LIEBIG’S TRANSITION FROM CHEMIST TO AGRONOMIST, ADEPT OF THE ECOLOGICAL AGRICULTURE
Abstract
In this paper we present additional information on the ways wherein Justus von Liebig perceived himself as a researcher and the nature around him that he wanted to discover. Spirited by the drive to contribute to a better nutrition for the people, he started as a gifted chemist in the laboratory, but then went on into the countryside to see how his laboratory findings worked out in farmers’ practices, in various countryside’s (soil-climate) conditions, and in human nutrition. The more he became an agronomist, the more he realised that the laboratory could serve but should not dictate agriculture. Recycling of organic matter became more important than focusing on external inputs, as the first improved soil-ecosystems whereas the latter tended to corrode the soils, and thus the whole food chain. Justus Von Liebig (1803–1873) is world-wide well-known in agriculture for his brilliant findings as a young scientist (1823), wherein he was, among other things, the founder of bio- and agro-chemistry. Unfortunatelly his book The Natural Laws of Husbandry (1863) wasn’t widely translated and vociferated similar to his previous book Organic Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology (1840).
