Johann Friedrich August Göttling

Johann Friedrich August Göttling (5 June 1753 – 1 September 1809) was a notable German chemist.

Gottling developed and sold chemical assay kits and studied processes for extracting sugar from beets ^[1] to supplement his meagre university salary. He studied the chemistry of sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, and mercury.^[1] He wrote texts on analytical chemistry and studied oxidation of organic compounds by nitric acid. He was one of first scientists in Germany to take a stand against the phlogiston hypothesis and be in favor of the new chemistry of Lavoisier.^[1]

Biography

He studied pharmacy at Langensalza under Johann Christian Wiegleb, and from 1775 worked at the Hofapotheke (court pharmacy) in Weimar.^[1][2] From 1785, Göttling studied natural sciences at the University of Göttingen. In 1789, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe appointed him extraordinary professor of philosophy with teaching duties in chemistry at the University of Jena.

He was notably the teacher of Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner.

Selected works

• Praktische Vortheile und Verbesserungen verschiedener pharmaceutisch-chemischer Operationen für Apotheker, 1783.
• Chemische Bemerkungen über das phosphorsaure Quecksilber und Hrn. Hahnemanns schwarzen Quecksilberkalk, 1795.
• Handbuch der theoretischen und praktischen Chemie, 1798.^[3]

References

• K. Hufbauer, The Formation of the German Chemical Community (1720-1795), University of California Press, 1982, pp. 207–208.
• Pharmazie, 1962, 17, pp. 624–634.
• Neue Deutsche Biographie, Duncker & Humblot: 1953-1990, 6, pp. 580–581.
• Duncker & Humblot (1964), "Gottling, Johann Friedrich August", Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB) (in German) 6, Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, pp. 580–581 
• Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte, Urban & Schwarzenberg, 1962, 2, p. 787.
• Dictionaire des Sciences Medicales Biographie Medicale, C. L. F. Panoucke, 1820-1822, 4, pp. 473–474.