Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler (1 November 1751, in

Görlitz Görlitz (; pl, Zgorzelec, hsb, Zhorjelc, cz, Zhořelec, :de:Ostlausitzer Mundart, East Lusatian dialect: ''Gerlz'', ''Gerltz'', ''Gerltsch'') is a town in the Germany, German state of Saxony. It is located on the Lusatian Neisse River, and ...

– 16 October 1795, in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

) was a German lawyer and physicist. He studied mathematics, natural sciences and law at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

, obtaining his

habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including a ...

for mathematics in 1776 and his law degree the following year. While a student, his influences included physicist

Johann Heinrich Winckler Johann Heinrich Winckler (12 March 1703 – 18 May 1770) was a German physicist and philosopher. Biography Early life Winckler was born in Wingendorf, a village in Silesia.Klemme, Heiner F; Kuehn, Manfred. (2016). ''The Bloomsbury Dictionary of E ...

. In 1783 he became a city councilman in Leipzig, and from 1786 served as an associate at the

Oberhofgericht Leipzig The Oberhofgericht Leipzig (German: Upper Court of Leipzig) was a judicial instance of the Electorate and then the Kingdom of Saxony from the fifteenth century until 1831. Until the fifteenth century, the Saxon ''Hofgericht'' (court) was linked t ...

He is best remembered as the author of a popular dictionary of physical sciences, ''Physikalisches Wörterbuch'', published from 1787 in six volumes. Decades later, the dictionary was edited and re-issued in 11 volumes (1825–45); its editors being

Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes Heinrich Wilhelm Brandes (; 27 July 1777 – 17 May 1834) was a German physicist, meteorologist, and astronomer. Brandes was born in 1777 in Groden near Ritzebüttel (a former exclave of the Free Imperial City of Hamburg, today in Cuxhaven), th ...

Leopold Gmelin Leopold Gmelin (2 August 1788 – 13 April 1853) was a German chemist. Gmelin was a professor at the University of Heidelberg He worked on the red prussiate and created Gmelin's test, and wrote his ''Handbook of Chemistry'', which over successiv ...

Johann Caspar Horner Johann Caspar Horner (Zürich, 12 March 1774 – Zürich, 3 November 1834) was a Swiss physicist, mathematician and astronomer. Life At the beginning he wanted to be a priest, but later he went to Göttingen, where he learnt astronomy. Then he ...

, Carl Ludwig Littrow, Christian Heinrich Pfaff and

Georg Wilhelm Muncke Georg Wilhelm Muncke or Georg Wilhelm Munke (28 November 1772, in Hilligsfeld – 17 October 1847, in Großkmehlen) was a German physicist. From 1797 to 1810 he worked as an administrator at the Georgianum in Hanover. In 1810 he became a pro ...

. In 1783 he published a German translation of

Tiberius Cavallo Tiberius Cavallo (also Tiberio) (30 March 1749, Naples, Italy21 December 1809, London, England) was an Italian physicist and natural philosopher. His interests included electricity, the development of scientific instruments, the nature of "gas, ...

's ''A complete treatise on electricity'' as ''Vollständige Abhandlung der theoretischen und praktischen Lehre von der Electricität''. In 1796 his translation of Fourcroy's ''Philosophie chimique'' was published with the title ''Philosophie oder Grundwahrheiten der neuern Chemie''.Most widely held works by Johann Samuel Traugott Gehler
WorldCat Identities

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gehler, Johann Samuel Traugott 1751 births 1795 deaths People from Görlitz Leipzig University alumni 18th-century German physicists