Johannes crowd

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Johannes Menge (born January 24, 1788 in Steinau an der Straße , † mid-October 1852 between Melbourne and Forrest Creek , Australia ) was a German mineralogist who discovered the first mineral resources in Australia.

Life

Lot came from a peasant family. He inherited her piety from his mother, who died early. He attended the local village school up to the age of 13 and was then employed as a teacher on a neighboring farm. His work for the mineralogist Karl Caesar von Leonhard was formative , for whom he began to work as an errand boy at the age of 17 in Hanau and who introduced him to mineralogy . Leonhard, who was trading in stone collections in Hanau at the time, soon took him on as a partner. The scientific knowledge gained in self-study and his first writings attracted the attention of scientific circles and crowd was accepted into the Senckenberg Society for Natural Research . When his partner Leonhard was offered a chair at the University of Munich in 1816 , Quantity acquired his mineral collection and shares in the joint business in Hanau and continued it alone. In the summer of 1819 he traveled through Iceland and brought back a treasure trove of Icelandic minerals from there .

Around 1819 he felt so attracted by the reputation of the reformed Lübeck preacher Johannes Geibel that he moved to Lübeck with his family and business and was accepted into its circle. From here he set out on his first research trip to Iceland. He examined the geysers there and sent collections of rocks and minerals from there to his shop in Lübeck. From 1825 to 1826 he went on his second research trip to Russia, where he met Alexander von Humboldt and Gustav Rose . He dealt there with platinum deposits , in turn sent minerals for his business to Lübeck. In a mineral collection in Miask I discovered the zirconium , which was first described in 1783 and had previously been ignored there . This led him to a trip to the region of the Fund Ilmengebirges . Henry James Brooke named a mineral mengite in his honor , but this name has not been preserved in mineralogy.

In Siberia he began studying the languages ​​of the Orient. Soon after his return to Lübeck he set off again in 1827, this time to Paris , where he deepened his knowledge of the Chinese, Persian and Arabic languages ​​and worked on a Chinese dictionary.

His wife died in 1830. This prompted him to close down his business in Lübeck and move to London with his three sons . In London he gave language lessons and worked as a translator for the British and Foreign Bible Society . His translation of the English liturgy into Chinese was printed. His three sons studied theology in Basel and all entered the service of the Anglican Church . In London he met the politician and initiator of the South Australian Company George Fife Angas , who introduced him to the new opportunities in Australia. Both remained in friendly contact throughout their lives.

In 1836, through the mediation of George Fife Angas, the South Australian Company commissioned him to research coal deposits in Australia. Immediately after his arrival, he discovered coal deposits on Kangaroo Island and began to exploit them. He soon recognized the mineral wealth of Australia. The first Governor of South Australia at the time, John Hindmarsh , withheld his list of the deposits and did not believe them. The crowd roamed Australia on foot for another 16 years. He died on a hike from Melbourne to Forrest Creek, now Castlemaine, and was found dead in his tent in mid-October 1852.

His field studies are among the earliest geological work on the Australian continent and they formed a historical starting point that helped establish the Geological Survey of South Australia .

Fonts

  • Notes for the Appreciation of Mineralogy as the Basis of All Expertise, 1819
  • Contributions to the knowledge of the divine work, divine word, divine likeness, 5 booklets, Lübeck 1822
  • Mineral Kingdom of South Australia , 1840

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The date of birth varies in different biographies with regard to the calendar day and the year (also: 1787); Information here according to NDB.
  2. ^ Scipione Breislak: Textbook of Geology , translated and edited by Friedrich Karl von Strombeck , Volume 3, Braunschweig: Vieweg 1821, pp. 532f.
  3. ↑ John F. amount: On the trail ... . 1999, p. 15
  4. ↑ HJ Brooke: About the mengite, a new mineral species, the aeschynite and the sarcolith, along with other mineralogical notes . Annalen der Physik, Vol. 99, Issue 11, pp. 360–367 (here 362), 1831 (PDF; 302 kB)
  5. ↑ Charles Caesar volume decreased in 1836 as a missionary of the Church Mission Society of Bombay and worked until 1869 in Nashik , Junir and Malegaon ; in retirement he lived in Stuttgart and looked after the Anglican community in Thusis in the summer ; he died on April 9, 1885. John Philipp Mengé († 1878) was also a CMS missionary and came to Gorakhpur in 1840 , where he worked until 1852, then in Lucknow 1858–1866 and 1867–1868 in Kangra ; after his return in 1870 he became a British chaplain in Milan , where he also died (according to CMS archive entries)
  6. ^ History of the Geological Survey of South Australia including its successor institutions (Bernard J. O'Neil: 125 years of the Geological Survey of South Australia: 1882-2007) . in: MESA Journal 46 (9/2007), pp. 11–17 ( Memento of the original from March 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English; PDF; 730 kB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.pir.sa.gov.au
personal data
SURNAME Crowd, Johannes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German mineralogist
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Steinau an der Straße
DATE OF DEATH October 1852
Place of death between Melbourne and Forrest Creek