The New International Encyclopædia/Forster, Johann Reinhold

FOR'STER, Johann Reinhold (1729-98). A German traveler and naturalist. He was born in Dirschau, was educated for the clerical profession at Halle, and in 1753 became pastor at Nassenhuben, near Danzig; but devoted most of his time to mathematics and the natural sciences. In 1765 he accepted an offer made to him by the Russian Government to inspect and report upon the new colonies founded on the banks of the Volga. His irritable temper soon involved him in difficulties with the Russian Government, and in the following year he repaired to England and became teacher of natural history at Warrington, Lancashire. In 1772 he was invited to take part in Cook's second expedition to the South Seas. In 1777 he published, in collaboration with his son, his Observations upon a Voyage Around the World, containing the information he had gathered in course of that voyage. In the same year he returned to Germany, and in 1780 became professor of natural history and mineralogy at Halle. Besides the above work, he published Zoologia Indica (1781), and Geschichte der Schiffahrt und Entdeckungen im Norden (1784).