Christoph Samuel John

Christoph Samuel John (11 August 1747 – 1 September 1813) was a German missionary in the service of the Danish-Halle Mission in southern India at the Danish settlement of Tranquebar (Tharangambadi).

John was born in Frobersgrün near Greiz to priest Julius Gerhard (1708–1780) and Catharina Dorothea Pyrläus (c. 1710–1780).

He was ordained in 1769 at Copenhagen and went with the mission to Tranquebar along with Wilhelm Jacobus Müller, leaving on 16 March 1771 after a previous plan to sail on January 6, 1770, had to be cancelled due to winter ice.

[2] John was influenced into the study of natural history by Johann Gerhard König[3] and began to collect specimens.

John suffered from blindness and lung disease and died of a stroke in Tranquebar and is buried at the New Jerusalem Cemetery.