Johann Christoph Sturm (3 November 1635 – 26 December 1703)[1] was a German philosopher, professor at University of Altdorf and founder of a short-lived scientific academy known as the Collegium Curiosum, based on the model of the Florentine Accademia del Cimento.

[2] He edited two volumes of the academy's proceedings under the title Collegium Experimentale (1676 and 1685).

[1] Sturm is the author of Physica Electiva (1697), a book that criticized Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and prompted him to publish a rebuke.

Sturm's critique was aimed at Leibniz's view that Nature and/or its constituent parts possess some creative force of their own.

This criticism was partly theological, in that Sturm claimed Leibniz's view of Nature undermined the sovereignty of the Christian God.