This is a portrait of Ernst Chladni which is featured on the title page of the 1830 edition of his book, Die Akustik.
Introduction
Ernst Florens Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827) was a significant figure in the fields of acoustics and astronomy. He stressed the ideals of Romanticism within science, combining his interests in the practical and the theoretical. Chladni drew inspiration and insights from multiple fields of study, including music, physics, chemistry, literature, and natural history.
Chladni was the first scientist to argue, in a book published in 1794, that meteorites had a cosmic origin. In acoustics, he was best known for a series of experiments that created visual representations of sound wave patterns in solid plates. He also calculated the rate at which sound waves vibrate in various fixed substances (zinc, silver, copper, iron, glass, etc.). In 1802 he published a landmark textbook on acoustics, Die Akustik.