Klaproth

Klaproth, HEINRICH JULIUS VON, orientalist, was born at Berlin, 11th October 1783, the son of Professor Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817), chemist and mineralogist. At fourteen undertaking the study of Chinese, in 1805 he was appointed interpreter to a Russian embassy to China. It was stopped on the frontier, when Klaproth took the opportunity of exploring Siberia, as afterwards (in 1807-8) the Caucasus and Georgia. Returning to Germany in 1812, he settled three years later in Paris, where in 1816 he was appointed professor of Asiatic Languages, and where he died, 20th August 1835. From 1802 onwards he published innumerable works, in German and later in French, on the subject of his travels, of Asiatic philology and ethnology, of Egyptian hieroglyphics, &c. A blot on their erudition and acuteness is his virulent assaults on other scholars. His Erfindung des Kompasses was edited by Wittstein in 1885.