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PowerPedia:Hans Jenny

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Hans Jenny (1904-1972) was physician and natural scientist who is considered the father of cymatics, the study of wave phenomena.

Biography

Jenny was born in Basel, Switzerland. After completing his doctorate, he taught science at the Rudolph Steiner School in Zürich for four years before beginning his medical practice.

In 1967, Jenny published the first volume of Cymatics: The Study of Wave Phenomena. The second volume came out in 1972, the year he died. This book was a written and photographic documentation of the effects of sound vibrations on fluids, powders and liquid paste. Photographs of Jenny's work are as remarkable as the patterns which emerged. He concluded, "This is not an unregulated chaos; it is a dynamic but ordered pattern."

Jenny's work influenced Alvin Lucier and, along with cymatics work by Ernst Chladni, helped lead to his composition Queen of the South. Jenny's work was also followed up by Center for Advanced Visual Study (CAVS) founder Gyorgy Kepes at MIT. [1] His work in this area included an acoustically vibrated piece of sheet metal in which small holes had been drilled in a grid. Small flames of gas burned through these holes and thermodynamic patterns were made visible by this setup.