Friedrich Hoffmann

Friedrich Hoffmann (1660 to 1742), also written Hofmann and known in English as Frederick Hoffmann, was a German physician and chemist. His family had been connected with medicine for 200 years. Born in Halle, he credited his skill in mathematics, learned at the local gymnasium, for much of his later success. He studied medicine at Jena from the age of 18, heard Kasper Cramer lecture on chemistry at Erfurt in 1680, and took his doctor's diploma at Jena in 1681, after which he was allowed to teach. In 1682 he opened a practice at Minden, travelled to Holland and England, and in 1688 became physician to the principality of Halberstadt. In 1693, shortly after the University of Halle was founded, he was appointed primary professor of medicine and natural philosophy, and he served as rector three times. He spent four years, 1708 to 1712, as royal physician in Berlin and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1720. His chief work, Medicina rationalis systematica, was begun at sixty and published in 1730. He died in Halle in 1742.