FORSTER, JOHN GEORGE ADAM, commonly called GEORGE, a distinguished naturalist and circumnavigator, the son of John Reinhold Forster, was born at Danzig in 1754, and enjoyed, in his earliest youth, the advantage of his father's assiduous and affectionate instructions, by which he profited so rapidly, that he was capable, at the age of ten years, when he went with his father into Russia, of ascertaining the species of a plant by comparing it with the Linnaean description. He was for a short time at a school in Petersburg. Upon his arrival in London, he was at first placed in a merchant's counting-house, but soon found his health unequal to the employment, and followed his father to Warrington, where he continued his studies at the academy with so much application, that he became a perfect master of the English language, and otherwise distinguished himself by the strength of his memory and the vigour of his imagination, at the same time that he assisted his father in giving lessons in French, and in completing a variety of translations of voyages and travels. He also accompanied his father, together with Sparrman, in the arduous engagement of making all kinds of physical observations in the circumnavigation of the globe; and he was particularly employed in delineating the various objects of natural history which were discovered. After his
return he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; but he soon quitted England to settle at Paris. In 1779, however, he was appointed professor of natural history at Cassel; and in 1784 he was nominated to a similar situation in the university of Wilna, where he took a degree of doctor of physics; but he found little satisfaction in residing amongst a people so imperfectly civilized. The Empress of Russia had engaged him to take an important part in a new voyage of discovery which she meditated; but the design was abandoned upon the commencement of the war with the Turks. He was next invited by the Elector of Mentz to accept the appointment of president of the university newly established in that city, and he was residing there at the time when the French army entered it. Being a declared republican in his political principles, he was despatched as an envoy to Paris to solicit the incorporation of Mentz with the French republic; but during his absence the Prussian troops retook the city, and he lost the whole of his property, including his numerous manuscripts. He had married a Miss Theresa Hayne, and had one daughter as early as 1788; but, at a subsequent period, his wife's conduct gave him great reason for uneasiness; and though he affected to despise what he called the prejudices of social life, and to excuse her infidelity, and even attempted to facilitate her union with a more favoured admirer, still the affair in reality affected him deeply, and he resolved once more to leave Europe, as if in search of the waters of oblivion; and he was actually preparing for a voyage to Thibet, when his health was subdued by the ravages of a scorbutic disorder, and he died on the 13th February 1792. Besides the assistance which he rendered his father in many of his literary undertakings, he was also the author of a variety of separate publications under his own name.
of the Year 1790, Svo, Berlin, 1793. There are also several political pamphlets of a temporary nature, which could add little or nothing to their author's fame; and a few scattered memoirs in different periodical publications. He was also concerned in the Collection of Voyages published by Professor Sprengel; and, together with Pallas and others, in an edition of Martini's Dictionary of Natural History. Indeed, his life, though short, was one continued scene of literary activity; but his application to the labour of compilation was too unremitting to allow him to concentrate the whole force of his mind on the performance of any one great original work of genius. The Sketches of the Mythology and Customs of the Hindoos were written by another author of the same name.
(Life by Pougens; J. R. Forster in Jacobi's Annals, and in the Dedication of his Enchiridion; Eyries in Biographie Universelle, vol. xv., Svo, Paris, 1818; Alkin's General Biography, vol. iv., 4to, London, 1808; Chalmers's Biographical Dictionary, vol. xiii., Svo, London, 1814.)