Gerhard Friedrich Müller

Gerhardt Friedrich Müller;Gerhard Friedrich Mueller;Fyodor Ivanovich Miller

1705 (Herford, Germany) – 1783 (Moscow)

Müller, one of the true founders of ethnography, was among many Germans recruited by Peter the Great to the scientific academy in St Petersburg, spending nearly 50 years in the country. He spent years mapping Siberia, and made prodigious efforts to write a scholarly history of Russia. He joined Bering’s second expedition to Siberia and Kamchatka, though he and his colleague Gmelin parted ways with it after a year. Pallas, Steller, Krasheninnikov and Amman were further scientific colleagues, and Linnaeus and Euler correspondents for decades. He visited Sloane in London, and had a damaging run-in with Lomonosov.

Gerhard Friedrich Müller knew…

Heinrich Berghaus

1797 (Kleve, Germany) – 1884 (Stettin, Germany, now Szczecin, Poland)

Berghaus and the explorer/scientist Humboldt drew extensively on each other’s pioneering expertise; for example the graphic representation of isotherms reflects Humboldt’s researches and Berghaus’ exceptional cartographic enterprise (his astonishing thematic maps can be regarded as pure scientific knowledge). Hermann Berghaus was Berghaus’ nephew and professional colleague.