In 1794, Chladni published
Über den Ursprung der von Pallas gefundenen und anderer ihr ähnlicher Eisenmassen und über einige damit in Verbindung stehende Naturerscheinungen ("On the Origin of the Iron Masses Found by
Pallas and Others Similar to it, and on Some Associated Natural Phenomena") in which he proposed that
meteorites have an
extraterrestrial origin.
[16][17] This was a controversial statement at the time,
[18] since meteorites were thought to be of volcanic origin. This book made Chladni one of the founders of modern meteorite research.
Chladni was initially ridiculed for his claims, but his writings sparked a curiosity that eventually led more researchers supporting his theory. In 1795, a large
stony meteorite was observed during its fall to Earth at a cottage near
Wold Newton in
Yorkshire,
England and a piece of it, known as the
Wold Cottage meteorite, was given to the
British chemist Edward Howard who, along with
French mineralogist Jacques de Bournon, carefully analyzed its composition and concluded that an extraterrestrial origin was likely.
[19] In 1803, the physicist and
astronomer Jean Baptiste Biot was commissioned by the
French Minister of the Interior to investigate
a meteor shower over L'Aigle in northern France that had peppered the town with thousands of meteorite fragments.
[20][8][9] Unlike Chladni's book and the scientific publication by Howard and de Bournon, Biot's lively report became popular and persuaded more people to take Chladni's insights seriously.
[17]
