Johann Jacob Ferber

Ferber published his observations in books and publications of learned societies, and sustained an important network of scientists during a time when the sciences of mineralogy and geology were undergoing rapid development.

Johann Jacob's grandfather, Johan Eberhard Ferber, was also a pharmacist to the Navy with scientific interests; he planted a botanical garden in Augerum and kept a cabinet of curiosities.

[5] Ferber had close access to some of Sweden's most accomplished scientists of the time; he attended the lectures of Linnaeus, who also supervised his thesis in 1763,[2] and he lived in the house of astronomer Fredric Mallet [sv], who also taught him astronomy and mathematics.

[5][6] The following years, 1768 to 1771, he spent visiting important mining districts in present-day Germany (the Harz and Palatinate regions, and Bavaria), as well as in Holland, Bohemia, Cornwall, Derbyshire, France and notably in Hungary.

[5] In the summer of 1770 he briefly returned to Sweden, where he successfully lobbied the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to elect Ignaz von Born as a corresponding member.

[6] He then returned to Sweden, again only briefly, before moving to Mitau (present-day Jelgava) to take up the chair in chemistry and natural history of the Academia Petrina, a position he had been offered by the Duke of Courland and Semigallia, Peter von Biron.

[5] In particular the observations from his Italian trip, published in German in 1773 as Herrn Johann Jakob Ferbers Briefe aus Wälschland über natürliche Merkwürdigkeiten dieses Landes, and later translated into French and English, was widely read and disseminated through Europe.

For example, he edited and partly funded the publication of an important thesis on chemical analysis of minerals (Sciagraphia regni mineralis) by his friend Torbern Bergman.

For instance, he supplied Charles De Geer with minerals for his collections at Lövstabruk, and it was thanks to samples of mosaic from Pompeii provided by Ferber that Torben Bergman could for the first time demonstrate that these were made of glass paste, not stone.

Italian historian Marco Beretta [fr] has summarised the achievements of Ferber as "one of the principal protagonists in these advances and during the course of a very full and distinguished career managed to construct a network of international scientific ties that provided a secure reference point for those in any country of Europe who wished to undertake the study of this new and promising sector of the natural sciences.