Heinrich Friedrich Emil Lenz (Russian: ) (12

February 1804 10 February 1865) was a Russian physicist of Baltic German

ethnicity. He is most noted for formulating Lenz's law in electrodynamics in 1833.
The symbol {\displaystyle L} L, conventionally representing inductance, is chosen
in his honor.[1]

Lenz was born in Dorpat (nowadays Tartu, Estonia), at that time the Governorate
of Livonia in the Russian Empire. After completing his secondary education in
1820, Lenz studied chemistry and physics at the University of Dorpat.[2] He
traveled with the navigator Otto von Kotzebue on his third expedition around the
world from 1823 to 1826. On the voyage Lenz studied climatic conditions and the
physical properties of seawater. The results have been published in "Memoirs of
the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences" (1831).