Johann Beckmann

Johann Beckmann (1739–1811) was a German scientific author and coiner of the word technology, to mean the science of trades. He was the first man to teach technology and write about it as an academic subject.

He was born on June 4, 1739, at Hoya in Hanover, where his father was postmaster and receiver of taxes. He was educated at Stade and the university of Göttingen, where he studied theology, mathematics, physics, natural history, and public finance and administration. After completing his studies, in 1762 he made a study tour through Brunswick and the Netherlands examining mines, factories and natural history museums.

The death of his mother in 1762 having deprived him of his means of support, he went in 1763 on the invitation of the pastor of the Lutheran community, Anton Friedrich Büsching, the founder of the modern historic statistical method of geography, to teach natural history in the Lutheran gymnasium St. Petrischule in St Petersburg, Russia. This office he relinquished in 1765, and travelled in Denmark and Sweden, during 1765–66, where he studied the methods of working the mines, factories and foundries as well as collections of art and natural history. He made the acquaintance of Linnaeus at Uppsala. (His travel diary of these journeys Schwedische Reise in den Jahren 1765–1766 was published in Uppsala in 1911.) In 1766 he was appointed extraordinary professor of philosophy at Göttingen. There he lectured on political and domestic economy, and in 1768 he founded a botanic garden on the principles of Linnaeus. Such was his success that in 1770 he was appointed ordinary professor.

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