JOHN, during nearly forty-five years professor at Göttingen, was born at Hoye, in the electorate of Hanover, in 1739. His father, who was receiver of taxes, and postmaster in that town, occupied himself in the cultivation of a small piece of land, and appears to have inspired his son with a taste for agriculture. However, all the honour of his education belongs to his mother, who, having become a widow when young Beckmann was scarcely seven years old, sent him, in his fifteenth year, to the school at Stade, placing him under the care of Gehlen. Being intended for the clerical function, he repaired in 1759 to Göttingen, to finish his studies there; but, whether the advice of Hollmann, who testified much kindness towards him, produced a change in his plans, or that the instructions of the mathematicians, Kaestner and Tobias Mayer, had greater attractions for him than theology, he abandoned the career on which he had entered, in order to devote himself entirely to the natural sciences, and principally to the application of these sciences to economical purposes. His first studies were not without their use to him; he derived from them a methodical habit of mind, and a considerable knowledge of languages, which, in the sequel, assisted him greatly in the pursuits to which he owed his celebrity. In 1762, having lost his mother, and with her his former means of subsistence, he accepted the offer of Busching, who invited him to come and fill the situation of Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Lutheran Academy at St Petersburg, of which this celebrated geographer had at that time the direction; but Busching quitting the institution shortly after, and dissensions having arisen among the superintendents, Beckmann gave up his place, and made a journey through Sweden to acquire a detailed knowledge of the mines of this country, and of the manner of working them. Linnaeus having received him hospitably at Upsal, he prolonged his stay there, and availed himself of the friendship as well as the instructions of this great naturalist. In 1766, the governors of the university of Göttingen appointed him, on the recommendation of Busching, professor to this celebrated establishment, of which he became one of the principal ornaments. His mind, entirely directed to the practical uses of human knowledge, had early conceived the idea of an academical classification of the arts and different branches of economy, both political and domestic, which had hitherto been left to routine and accident. He composed, to serve him as a guide in this course of instruction, Treatises on Rural Economy, on Policy, on Finance, on Commerce, and other departments of practical knowledge; which, though since carried to a higher degree of perfection, owed to Beckmann their primary elements and their first scientific form. His Lectures, which had at the time the recommendation of novelty, were attended by the flower of the studious youth, whom the most civilized nations of Europe sent to the university of Göttingen; and it may be added, that the most distinguished statesmen and public functionaries of Germany were among his auditors. He was in the habit of accompanying them himself into the workshops, to give them a knowledge of the different processes and handi-crafts of which he had explained to them the theory. He never relinquished his public lectures; but his private studies took insensibly a direction altogether historical, the motives for which it will not, perhaps, be uninteresting to point out.

It is considered at Göttingen, that a professor cannot be excused from explaining the progress of the science which he teaches, in all the civilized nations of Europe at the same time. Any one who, two years after the appearance of a work of importance in his department, published in any country of Europe whatsoever, should not have read and analyzed it in order to refute or else enrich his own observations from it, would not regard himself as a worthy successor to the chair of Haller, of Mosheim, of Gesner, and Michaelis. Beckmann, in particular, having studied at Göttingen at a time when the example of these great men dictated the law and gave the tone there, was determined to advance in a line with his age, and not to be ignorant of any of the steps which were making by the numerous and extensive sciences which furnished the foundation and the subjects of practical principles. But these steps were the steps of a giant; and whatever might be his ardour or his love of study, how could he be supposed to read and judge of all the important works which appeared from the year 1770, on chemistry theoretical and practical, on physics, natural history, and mathematics? His disappointment ended in chagrin, and excited in him a degree of anger against the new ideas, methods of reasoning, and materials, which changed the face, enlarged the limits, and facilitated the study of these sciences. His course of lectures, turning only on practical matters, suffered little from this circumstance; but feeling that his writings would be accused of remaining behind the progress of the sciences which were the subject of them, he directed the researches with which he wished to occupy the attention of the public to the history of arts and trades, and employed, in the illustration of this subject, the materials to which he had access in the Göttingen library, assisted by general information, a mind peculiarly fitted for this kind of study, and indefatigable industry. It is to these labours that we owe the Notices of Beckmann on the history of discoveries in the most common arts of life; for instance, the history of watch-making, of distillation, of almanacs, of insurance, of the lighting of streets, of the original country and migrations of the fruits and flowers in our gardens, of the common materials for dyeing, of bellows, of fire-arms, of mills, of grinding corn, of carriages, of different parts of our dress, of different household utensils, of a multitude of machines and mechanical contrivances employed in common trades; and of most of the products of industry, such as the gathering of saffron, the preparation of alum, the printing-press, of fulling-mills, of book-keeping, of the digging of turf, of gazettes and newspapers, of stamped paper, of the pearl fishery, of pavings, of chimneys, of collections of natural curiosities, of mile-stones, of pharmacy, of quarantine, of painted paper, of ruffles, of milking, of pawn-brokers, of looking-glasses and glass in general, of soap, of musical glasses, of watchmen, of ices to be eaten, of the anatomy of plants, of exchange, of pens for writing, of instruments of husbandry, of fireworks, of the working of pewter, of the to appreciate the researches of Beckmann, as he had himself insisted with so much force on the necessity of introducing into history a view of the influence exercised on social institutions by the efforts of industry, and by the birth or maturity of the most common arts. Beckmann died on the 3d of February 1811, after having been admitted into almost all the learned societies of Germany and the north, and after having impressed a tendency to pursuits of practical utility on the minds of a multitude of distinguished young men who had attended his lectures, and whom his celebrity drew to Göttingen during the forty-five years of his professorship. A portrait of him will be found at the head of the twelfth volume of the Economical Encyclopaedia of Krunitz, and it has been engraved separately by Raid, Schwenterley, and Grape. Beckmann married the daughter of Hollmann, his tutor and friend; she survived him only a few weeks, and they left a son and daughter grown up. His eulogium was pronounced by his colleague, the illustrious Heyne, and was published at Göttingen, with this title, Memoria Joan. Beckmann, Soc. R. Sci. Götting., sodalis in concessu Soc. Publico D. 16 Febr. 1811, commendata.