German palæontologist, born at Brunswick in 1774, and educated at Göttingen. In 1807 he became assistant keeper, and in 1813 he was appointed keeper, of the department of natural history in the British Museum, and afterwards of geology and mineralogy, retaining the post until the close of his life. He described many fossils in the British Museum in a classic work entitled Icones fossilium sectiles (1820–1825). He died in London on the 6th of September 1851.
