Heinrich Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (3 February 1786 – 23 October 1842) was a German orientalist, lexicographer, Christian Hebraist, Lutheran theologian, Biblical scholar and critic.

On 8 February 1810 he became professor extraordinarius in theology, and on 16 June 1811 was promoted to ordinarius, at the University of Halle, where, in spite of many offers of high preferment elsewhere, he spent the rest of his life.

Among his pupils the most eminent were Peter von Bohlen, C. P. W. Gramberg, A. G. Hoffmann, Hermann Hupfeld, Emil Rödiger, J. C. F. Tuch, J. K. W. Vatke and Theodor Benfey.

[3]: 16, 35–45  His large lexicon of Biblical Hebrew and Chaldee (Aramaic) was first published in 1829, and its revision and expansion, under the editorship of Rödiger, continued after Gesenius's death until 1858.

[6] Gesenius takes much of the credit for having freed Semitic philology from the trammels of theological and religious prepossession, and for inaugurating the strictly scientific (and comparative) method which has since been so fruitful.

Edward Robinson, an acquaintance of Gesenius, and his principal English translator and biographer, said of him,So clear were his own conception, that he never uttered a sentence, no scarcely ever wrote one, which even the dullest intellect did not at once comprehend.

In all that fell within the proper sphere of his own researches, he never rested upon the authority of others, but investigated for himself, with all the minute accuracy and closeness of detail and unwearied industry for which German learning is celebrated.

[4]: 372 Gesenius also contributed extensively to Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopädie, and enriched the German translation of Johann Ludwig Burckhardt's Travels in Syria and the Holy Land with valuable geographical notes.