Nathanael Gottfried Leske

Nathanael Gottfried Leske was a German natural scientist and geologist from the Holy Roman Empire, born in Muskau in 1751 and killed in an accident on his way to Marburg in 1786. After studying at the Freiberg mining academy and the Francke Foundations in Halle he became a special professor of natural history at the University of Leipzig in 1775 and taught economics there from 1777, and in 1786 he was called to a chair of financial science and economics at Marburg. He published more than thirty scientific articles and books, edited the Leipziger Magazin zur Naturkunde, Mathematik und Oekonomie, corresponded with the geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner, and influenced early geological theory as a supporter of Plutonism. His Leskean Cabinet of minerals and natural history specimens was sold in 1792 to the Dublin Society and is now in the National Museum of Ireland.