Gustav Bischof

Gustav Bischof was a German chemist and geologist born January 18, 1792, in Nuremberg, Bavaria, who died November 30, 1870, in Bonn, Germany, and who studied at Erlangen, began lecturing in 1815, and was appointed extraordinary professor of chemistry at Bonn in 1819, becoming full professor in 1822. Considered the founder of chemical geology, he introduced systematic chemical analysis into geological practice, addressed the scientific study of mineral springs for the first time, and conducted experiments on planetary cooling, coal formation and the origin of petroleum, publishing the influential Lehrbuch der chemischen und physikalischen Geologie between 1847 and 1866, which became a standard text of geochemistry. He was elected a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in 1859 and received the Wollaston Medal in 1863.