After visiting France and England he was appointed professor of church history in his native town of Zürich in 1642.

The chair of Hebrew at the Carolinum in Zürich was added in 1643, and in 1653 he was appointed professor ordinarius of logic, rhetoric and theology.

[1] He was succeeded upon his death at the chair of theology in Zürich by his fellow Zürich-native younger namesake and former student at Heidelberg, Johann Heinrich Heidegger.

(1651–1667); Thesaurus philologicus seu clavis scripturae (1649; 3rd edition 1698); Etymologicon orientale, sive lexicon harmonicum heptaglotton (1661).

[1] His son, Johann Jakob Hottinger (1652–1735), who became professor of theology at Zürich in 1698, was the author of a work against Roman Catholicism, Helvetische Kirchengeschichte (4 vols, 1698–1729); and his grandson, Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1681–1750), who in 1721 was appointed professor of theology at Heidelberg, wrote a work on dogmatics, Typus doctrinae christianae (1714).