Johann Heinrich Pott

Johann Heinrich Pott (1692 to 1777) was a Prussian physician, chemist and glass and porcelain technologist, considered a pioneer of pyrochemistry. Born in Halberstadt, the son of a royal councillor, he studied at the cathedral school and at Francke's pedagogium before reading theology at the University of Halle, then turned to medicine and chemistry under Georg Ernst Stahl. In 1713 he studied assaying at Mansfield, and for two years he travelled with two brothers as an evangelist of the Community of True Inspiration before leaving the sect in 1715. He took a doctorate at Halle in 1716 on sulfur under Friedrich Hoffmann, practised in Halberstadt, and moved to Berlin in 1720, where in 1724 he became professor of chemistry at the Collegium Medico Chirurgicum. Like Stahl he promoted the phlogiston theory. He examined bismuth, manganese, graphite and pyrolusite, introduced borax and phosphorus beads in analysis, and founded a porcelain factory at Freienwalde for Frederick II. His books include Exercitationes chymicae of 1738 and Lithogeognosia of 1746 to 1757.