Georg Heinrich Ferdinand Nesselmann (February 14, 1811 in Fürstenau, near Tiegenhof, West Prussia (now

Kmiecin Kmiecin is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Nowy Dwór Gdański, within Nowy Dwór Gdański County, Pomeranian Voivodeship, in northern Poland. It lies approximately south-east of Nowy Dwór Gdański and south-east of the regi ...

, within Nowy Dwór Gdański) – January 7, 1881 in

Königsberg Königsberg (, ) was the historic Prussian city that is now Kaliningrad, Russia. Königsberg was founded in 1255 on the site of the ancient Old Prussian settlement ''Twangste'' by the Teutonic Knights during the Northern Crusades, and was na ...

) was a German orientalist, a

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as ...

with interests in

Baltic languages The Baltic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 4.5 million people mainly in areas extending east and southeast of the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. Together with the Slavic lan ...

, and a mathematics historian. At the

University of Königsberg The University of Königsberg (german: Albertus-Universität Königsberg) was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as the world's second Protestant academy (after the University of Marburg) by Duke Albert of Pruss ...

he studied mathematics under

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi (; ; 10 December 1804 – 18 February 1851) was a German mathematician who made fundamental contributions to elliptic functions, dynamics, differential equations, determinants, and number theory. His name is occasio ...

and Friedrich Julius Richelot, and oriental philology under Peter von Bohlen. In 1837 he received his PhD at Königsberg, where in 1859 he became a full professor of

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

and

Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominalization, nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cul ...

. In his book "''Die Sprache der alten Preußen''" (The language of the Old Prussians, 1845), he suggested the term "

".The Baltic
by Michael North

Works

*
Versuch einer kritischen Geschichte der Algebra
', G. Reimer, Berlin 1842 *
Wörterbuch der littauischen Sprache
', Gebrüder Bornträger, Königsberg 1851 *
Littauische Volkslieder, gesammelt, kritisch bearbeitet und metrisch übersetzt
', Dümmler, Berlin 1853 *''Thesaurus linguae prussicae'', 1873, Reprint 1969 *''Die Sprache der alten Preußen an ihren Überresten erläutert'', 1845 Berlin: Reimer *
Ein deutsch-preußisches Vocabularium aus dem Anfange des 15. Jahrhunderts
'. In: Altpreußische Monatsschrift Bd. 4, Heft 5, Königsberg 1868

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nesselmann, Georg Heinrich Ferdinand 1811 births 1881 deaths People from Nowy Dwór Gdański County People from West Prussia Balticists 19th-century German mathematicians German philologists German orientalists 19th-century German writers 19th-century German male writers University of Königsberg alumni University of Königsberg faculty German male non-fiction writers