Johann Georg Kohl

Johann Georg Kohl (28 April 1808 – 28 October 1878) was a German travel writer, historian, and geographer. Life Son of a wine merchant, he attended a gymnasium in Bremen, and then studied law at the universities of Göttingen, Heidelberg and Munich. When his father died in 1830, he had to break off his studies, and spent six years working as a tutor in Courland. He then traveled to St. Petersburg and other parts of Russia. In 1838, he returned to Germany and settled in Dresden from where he visited much of Europe and wrote about his experiences. Future theories Kohl's main scientific work, Der Verkehr und die Ansiedlungen der Menschen in ihrer Abhängigkeit von der Gestalt der Erdoberfläche (Transportation and settlement of people and their dependence on surface terrain) (1841, 1850) is regarded as the founding document of modern transport and urban geography. Using Moscow as an example, he formulated a mathematical theory for the development of spherical cities and how eventually these cities would develop skyscrapers and underground shopping centers. Similarly, also fundamental to the theoretical geography was his Die geographische Lage der Hauptstädte Europas (The Geographical Location of the Capitals of Europe) (1874). Travels in Ireland and Liverpool Kohl's record of his 1842 journey to Ireland and the English port of Liverpool remain an important insight into the condition of both locations before both were beset by the humanitarian disaster of the Great Famine.