several papers, which appeared in the Memoirs of the Imperial Society of Naturalists of Moscow, such as "Description of the Rarer Siberian Plants;" "Catalogue of Plants in the Gorenki Garden;" and "Monographs relating to various species and genera." In 1821 he travelled in France, England, and Germany, and established extensive correspondence in these countries. On the death of Count Razumoffsky he was appointed by the Emperor Alexander, in 1823, director of the imperial botanic garden at St. Petersburg. This garden was soon placed by Fischer on a proper footing. A large number of plants was transferred to it from the Gorenki garden; a library was founded, and a herbarium formed; new and valuable buildings were erected, and collections of seeds and plants were obtained from all quarters. Expeditions were also made at his suggestion to various parts of the Russian dominions. In 1850 Dr. Fischer resigned his office of director. In the same year he was appointed medical councillor in the department of the minister of the interior, and he continued to write botanical papers, which were published by the Moscow Society. He was a fellow of the Linnæan Society, and of many other scientific bodies. In 1837 he was elected a member of the Leopoldino-Caroline Academy of Naturalists, under the name of Rison. In 1830 he married the daughter of M. Von Struve, the Austrian minister at Hamburg.—J. H. B.
FISCHER, Gotthelf, better known as Fischer von Waldheim, Russian imperial councillor, vice-president of the Medico-chirurgical Academy, and professor at the university of Moscow, was born October 15, 1775, at Waldheim, Saxony. Having completed his medical studies, he accompanied the brothers Wilhelm and Alexander von Humboldt on a journey through Germany and France, and settling at Paris, applied himself to comparative anatomy, under the celebrated Cuvier. After a few years thus spent, he obtained the post of chief librarian at the city library of Mayence, where he began mixing in politics, making himself conspicuous, among others, as one of the deputies who went to Paris to ask the first consul to declare Mayence a commercial entrepot of the French empire. In 1804, through the recommendation of A. von Humboldt, he obtained a call as director of the museum, and professor in the university of Moscow, and he there founded the still existing Society of Russian Naturalists. At the great fire of Moscow, he lost his whole property, among it some very rich collections in natural history, and many valuable MSS. He became vice-president of the Medico-chirurgical Society in 1817. His chief works are—"Versuche über die Schwimmblase der Fische," 1795; "Uber die verschiedene Form des Intermaxillarknochens," 1800; "Essai sur les monuments typographiques de Jean Gutenberg," 1802; "Das National Museum der Naturgeschichte zu Paris," Frankfort, 1803; "Anatomie der Maki und der ihnen verwandten Thiere," ib. 1804; "Onomasticon du systéme d'orictognosie," Moscow, 1811; "Entomographie de la Russie et genres des Insectes," ib. 1820-28; "Oryctographie du gouvernement de Moscow," ib. 1830.—F. M.
FISCHER, Johann Andreas, was born in November, 1667, at Erfurt, and studied at the university of that city. After having for some time pursued the study of jurisprudence, he devoted himself to that of medicine, of which profession his father was a distinguished member. He took his doctor's degree in 1691, and, being appointed to a chair in the university, gained by his writings, lectures, and practice, a very high reputation. He died in February, 1729. His writings are still highly prized by the medical profession.—J. B. J.
FISCHER, Johann Eberhard, a German historical writer, was born at Esslingen in 1697. In 1730 he became professor in the gymnasium at St. Petersburg, and from 1739 to 1747 accompanied the Russian expedition to Kamtschatka. He died at St. Petersburg in 1771. He wrote a "History of Siberia," 1768; and "Quæstiones Petropolitanæ," Göttingen, 1779.—K. E.
FISCHER, Johann Friedrich, an eminent German scholar, was born at Coburg in 1726, and died in 1799. He completed his education at Leipzig under Ernesti, Kapp, Kaestner, &c., became a college tutor, and at length obtained the rectorship of the college of the Princes. Fischer was a man of extensive erudition, and a voluminous author. He edited and annotated many of the Greek and Latin authors, and published also several works of biblical criticism.—R. M., A.
FISCHER, Joseph, a celebrated Austrian engraver, was born at Vienna in 1769, and died there in 1822. He learned engraving under Professors Brand and Schmutzer, and having early distinguished himself, was in 1793 appointed court-engraver. Fischer was not only an excellent engraver, but an admirable draughtsman, and in the course of various journeys in Galicia, Hungary, France, and England, he made many drawings of the scenery and antiquities of those countries, which he afterwards engraved and published. He also painted many pictures, and is said to have directed the construction of a chapel in Galicia, for which he furnished the designs. For some time Fischer appears to have been regarded with much jealousy and mistrust by the artists of the Austrian capital, but he eventually secured a large amount of popularity, was in 1818 elected to the full honours of the academy, and after having held for six years the title of professor-extraordinary, he was in 1821 nominated professor of engraving and landscape design. Nagler gives a very long list of his engravings, but many of them were of a merely temporary character.—J. T—e.
FISCHER, Karl von. Bavarian architect, born at Mannheim, September 19, 1782; died at Munich, February 11, 1820. He was a pupil of Verschaffelt, an architect of considerable ability in Vienna. On quitting Verschaffelt, he studied for two years in France and Italy; when he was appointed professor of architecture in the academy of Munich, an office he continued to hold till his death. His principal work, the Hof theatre, Munich, was begun in 1811, and completed in 1818; it was nearly destroyed by fire in 1823, but was rebuilt in the following year according to the original designs. His other more important works were the home office, general hospital. Anger kirche, the palace of the crown prince, and several other of the principal mansions of the new part of Munich. Von Fischer died early, but he is generally regarded as the founder of the Munich school of architecture, though he has been eclipsed by his successors—J. T—e.
* FISCHER, Kuno, critic and historian of philosophy, the son of a Silesian clergyman, was born on the 23rd July, 1824, at Sandewalde. The great productive and creative period of German philosophy was from the publication of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, till the death of Hegel thirty years ago. It thus had a brief but brilliant reign of about half a century. If, during the present generation, German philosophy has declined, it is partly because the interest of the Germans themselves in philosophy has diminished. Though, however, since the death of Hegel, Germany has had no remarkable philosophers, it has had some very remarkable critics and historians of philosophy. Of these, perhaps, the ablest is Fischer. He studied at the universities of Leipzig and Halle. In 1847 he took the degree of doctor of philosophy. From the beginning of 1848 till the autumn of 1850, he held a situation as tutor at Pfortzheim. He then settled as a lecturer on philosophy at Heidelberg. Here he was exceedingly popular; but a conspiracy of extreme parties generally, induced the Baden government to withdraw from him the permission to teach in connection with the university. This step excited boundless commotion throughout Germany, and led to controversies in which Fischer himself took an active part. At the end of 1856 Fischer obtained a professorship at Jena, where his lectures have excited more attention, and been more warmly received, than any that had been delivered there from the famous time of Fichte and Schiller. Besides controversial writings and contributions to periodicals, Fischer has produced "Diotoma, or the Idea of the Beautiful;" and a work on logic and metaphysics. But for his renown he is indebted to his histories of philosophy. He has devoted a volume to Descartes, Geulincx, and Malebranche; another to Spinoza; another to Leibnitz and his school; a fourth to Bacon. The last has been translated into English. Fischer is a Hegelian; but he is too wise, gifted, and learned to be the servile or sectarian adherent of any man. At all events, unlike Heinrich Heine, Bruno, Bauer, Feuerbach, and many others, he would give to Hegelianism its loftiest spiritual interpretation—W. M—l.
FISCHER, Nicolaus Wolfgang, chemist and physician, was born January 15, 1782, at Gross-Meseritz in Moravia. He first practised as a physician in Breslau in 1807, and in 1808 delivered lectures on chemistry in that town. In 1813 he became a teacher (docent) at the university of Breslau; in 1813 extraordinary, and in 1814 ordinary professor of chemistry at that university. He died August 19, 1850, at Breslau. He is the author of a vast number of chemical researches. His first work—"Medicaminum mercuralium pract. classificatio; adjectis nonnullis de eorum præparatione chem. pharmac. annot.," was
