Johann Reinhold Forster
German naturalist (1729–1798)
Johann Reinhold Forster (German: [ˈfɔʁstɐ]; 22 October 1729 – 9 December 1798) was a German Reformed pastor and naturalist. Born in Dirschau, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (now Tczew, Poland), he attended school in Dirschau and Marienwerder before being admitted at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin in 1745. Skilled in classical and biblical languages, he studied theology at the University of Halle. In 1753, he became a parson at a parish just south of Danzig. He married his cousin Justina Elisabeth Nicolai in 1754, and they had seven children; the oldest child was George Forster, also known as Georg.
In 1765, Forster was commissioned by the Russian government to inspect the new colonies on the Volga. Accompanied by George on the journey, he observed the conditions of the colonists and made scientific observations that were later read at the Russian Academy of Sciences. After making a report that was critical of the Russian administration, Forster left for England without payment in 1766. In England, Forster became the successor of Joseph Priestley as tutor in modern languages and natural history at Warrington Academy where he worked for two years. He made contact with many other naturalists, published a textbook on mineralogy and translated works of the apostles of Linnaeus into English.
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This entry incorporates text from “Johann Reinhold Forster” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.