Johann Friedrich August Göttling


Johann Friedrich August Göttling was a notable German chemist.
Gottling developed and sold chemical assay kits and studied processes for extracting sugar from beets to supplement his meagre university salary. He studied the chemistry of sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, and mercury. He wrote texts on analytical chemistry and studied oxidation of organic compounds by nitric acid. He was one of the first scientists in Germany to take a stand against the phlogiston hypothesis and be in favor of the new chemistry of Lavoisier.

Biography

He studied pharmacy at Langensalza under Johann Christian Wiegleb, and from 1775 worked at the Hofapotheke in Weimar. From 1785, Göttling studied natural sciences at the University of Göttingen. In 1789, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe arranged for him to be an associate professor of chemistry and technology at the University of Jena. For a period of time, Göttling served as Goethe's primary source for chemical knowledge.
He was notably the teacher of Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner.

Selected works

He was also an editor of the journal Taschenbuch für Scheidekünstler und Apotheker.