Jean-Philippe Baratier

A noted child prodigy of the 18th century, he published eleven works and authored a great quantity of unpublished manuscripts.

[2] His father carefully conducted his early education, often eschewing direct instruction for more subtle and indirect modes of teaching.

[5] His progress was so rapid that by the time he was five years of age he could speak French, Latin and Dutch with ease, and read Greek fluently.

[6] At 14, he was admitted Master of Arts at Halle, and received into the Prussian Academy of Sciences, while working on a method to calculate longitude at sea.

The last years of his short life he devoted to the study of history of the Jewish people and antiquities, did translations, and had collected materials for histories of the Thirty Years' War and of Antitrinitarianism, and for an inquiry concerning Egyptian antiquities.