Friedrich Hoffmann

Friedrich Hoffmann, also spelled Hofmann, was a German physician and chemist, born in Halle in 1660 and died there in 1742. His family had been connected with medicine for two hundred years. He studied medicine at Jena from the age of eighteen, attended Kasper Cramer's chemistry lectures at Erfurt, took his doctor's diploma in 1681 and began teaching. He practised in Minden and then in Halberstadt, where he became physician to the principality. In 1693, soon after the University of Halle was founded, he became its primary professor of medicine and natural philosophy and served three times as rector. He spent four years, from 1708 to 1712, as royal physician in Berlin, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1720. His chief work is Medicina rationalis systematica, published in 1730. At the urging of Robert Boyle he analysed mineral waters and became a pioneer of their study, and he is credited with the first scientific investigation of carbon monoxide poisoning from burning charcoal, published in 1716.