Johann Reinhold Forster

Biography

Forster is downward of a family of the Yorkshire which settled in the middle of the 17th century with Dantzig.

Forster is known for its contributions in the field of the European Ornithologie and North-American. It draws also its fame from its participation, as naturalist, with the second voyage of James Cook in the ocean Pacifique; his/her son Georg, accompanies it.

He studies the Théologie at the university of Halle (Saxony-Anhalt) in Germany then becomes Pasteur Lutheran in Dantzig, then intendant of the colonies of Saratov in Russia.

In 1766, it goes in Great Britain with his/her Georg son, where it gives lessons of languages. He teaches three years with Warrington before settling with London, where he starts to be known in the field of the Natural history. He attends in particular Thomas Pennant.

He publishes in 1771, one of the first faunas of the North America, Catalog off the Animals off North America , small a octavo of 43 pages. The following year, it publishes, in the Philosophical Transactions of London, An account off the Birds feels from Hudson' S Bay, with observations relative to their natural history . Joseph Banks gives up, at the last moment, to accompany Cook during its second voyage, Forster and his/her son, Georg Forster (1754-1794), postulates to replace it. In July 1772, they embark on board the Resolution ; they will return to Great Britain only in July 1775. It is during a stopover in the Cape, that Forster meets Anders Sparrman and engages it as assistant.

On its return to London, Forster discovers that the government is not interested in its work and that it deprived it of the 1 000 pounds of rewards however promised by contract. It is found ruined and its collections are dispersed. Paintings of his/her son are sold with the biddings with Joseph Banks to refund the creditors. It is also Banks which acquires a great number of specimens of the collections of Forster. The remainder is acquired by the large collector Sir James Darcy Rising (1729-1788).

Its manuscript, Descriptiones animalium is deposited at the National library of Berlin and will be published only a long time after its death, in 1844.

Forster father and wire carefully consign the account of their voyage and constitute a rich person collection of objects of natural history and Ethnographie. On its return, Forster publishes Observations Made during has Voyage round the World (1778). In November 1779, he becomes professor of natural history and Minéralogie at the university of Market, in Prussia, where he will remain until his death in 1798.

Publications

Characteres generum plantarum quas in itinere AD insulas husbands australis collegerunt, descripserunt, delinearunt, annis 1772-1775 ( Characters of the southern plants ), 1776;
Observations made during the second voyage of Mr. Cook, in a voyage around the world, on the geography, physics, the natural history , London, 1778, in English, translated into French by Jean-Claude Pingeron;
History of discovered and the voyages made in North , Frankfurt-on-the Oder, translated by Pierre-Marie-Auguste Broussonnet (1761-1807), 1788.

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