Abraham Gottlob, the first geologist and mineralogist of his day, was born at Weslau, in Upper Lausitz, on the 25th of September 1750. His father being superintendent of a foundry at his native place, had him placed, at an early age, at the celebrated mining school of Freiberg, in Saxony. To prepare himself for ultimately entering the mining establishment at that place, he took a licentiate's degree in law at the University of Leipzig, where he wrote a brief treatise, in 1774, on the external characters of minerals, in which he proposed a methodical terminology to describe the qualities of those substances. This, says Cuvier, was performing for mineralogy what Linnaeus had done for the science of botany in his Philosophia Botanica. So original views, promulgated by a youth of four-and-twenty, were rather remarkable, and Werner rose immediately into notoriety. Next year he was chosen professor of mineralogy in the school of mines at Freiberg, and inspector of the mineralogical cabinet at that place. His fame as a lecturer was quite remarkable, pupils flocked to his class from all quarters. He was much greater as a practical teacher than he was as a writer. The distinguished names of such men as Alexander Humboldt, Von Buch, D'Aubuisson, Jameson, Brocchi, Napione, Freisleben, Raumer, Englehart, Karsten, Molis, Herder, Wiedemann, Emmerling, Reuss, Steffens, Breithaupt, Esmark, Wad, D'Andrada, and Elhiyar, bear witness to his discrimination as a mineralogist, as well as to his friendliness as a teacher. In 1787, he published a small work on the classification of rocks, but he was too hasty in his generalizations regarding the origin of basalt. Perhaps Werner's greatest achievement in geological science is his Theory of Formations. He taught that the exterior crust of the earth consists of a series of concentric liths (or "formations," as he called them), laid over each other in a certain determinate order. Ideas of this magnitude, says Cuvier, are the true marks of genius. His Formation of Veins, which he had long taught, in which he advocated the theory that they were originally open fissures, he published in 1791. This was his last work. It has been translated both into French and English. Werner had a singular aversion to the mechanical act of writing, and henceforward he contented himself with the reputation of his lectures. He is author of a great many terms in his favourite sciences, and while he sometimes generalized too hastily, he on the whole must be regarded as one of the greatest geologists who have yet appeared. In 1792, he was chosen counsellor of the mines of Saxony. On his visit to Paris in 1802, he was received with much honour by the scientific men of that city. He was made a foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences. Troubled with a severe disorder in the stomach, he went to Dresden in the hope of relieving it, where the malady put a period to his life on the 30th of June 1817, at the age of 66. The School of Mines at Freiberg received his collections and specimens at less than one-fourth of their original cost.

Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias, a German dramatist of some note, was the son of a professor of history and rhetoric in Königsberg, where he was born on November 18, 1768. After preparing for the civil service, he obtained a situation at Warsaw, where he, in 1800, wrote his first dramatic work, Die Söhne des Thals. It was distinguished, as indeed the majority of his dramas are, by simplicity of plot, depth of feeling, and power of language. After writing his Der Vierundzwanzigster Februar and his Das Kreuz an der Ostsee, he removed to Berlin, where, after publishing his Martin Luther, oder die Weihe der Kraft, and divorcing his third wife, he wandered over Europe like a spirit who had perpetrated some great crime, halting now here, now there, but settling nowhere. At last he entered the Romish Church, and was made a priest. He attracted considerable crowds as a preacher, but the purity and simplicity of his genius had forsaken him. He disfigured his discourses by puerile witticisms and indelicate humour, which likewise affected all his after-writings. He died on the 18th of January 1823, in his 56th year. A complete edition of his collected works appeared, in 14 vols., in 1839–41.