Biography

German naturalist on Cook's second Pacific voyage. Forster later served as a professor and director of the botanic gardens at the University of Halle. Forster was descended from a British family, one of his forefather's having emigrated to Europe during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. He was born at Dirschau (now Tczew), and went to Berlin to study languages and natural history. After this he studied theology at the University of Halle and became a Lutheran pastor at Nassenhuben (now Mokry Dwór). He married in 1854 and went on to have eight children (seven surviving to adulthood) over the next ten years.

Following a sojourn in Russia promoting the Volga as a region for German settlement (in the process losing his ministry), Forster travelled to England in 1766 with his eldest son, George, and began teaching languages and natural history at the Warrington Dissenters' Academy. The rest of the Forster family then came to England. Moving to London at the end of the 1760s Forster established himself as a naturalist, publishing A Catalogue of British Insects (1770) and a translation of Pehr Osbech's Voyage to China. He also became an authority on North American flora and fauna, and with George translated works by Kalm, Loefling and Bougainville.

Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1772, Forster's reputation led to an invitation to replace Joseph Banks on Cook's second voyage to the Pacific, Banks having withdrawn at the eleventh hour. Forster, accompanied by his 17-year-old son George, set sail with Cook in July 1772 on the Resolution, not to return for three years. Anders Sparrman, a pupil of Linnaeus, was recruited in Cape Town as an assistant, and together with the Forsters large natural history collections were gathered in South Africa, New Zealand, New Caledonia and Polynesia. In addition to their collections and observations, George Forster made numerous drawings. Though not a trained draughtsman, these were deemed to be remarkably accurate, more often depicting birds and fish than flora and land animals, however, for the expedition was at sea for the greater part.

Johann Forster complained bitterly during the voyage, of the accommodation and of Cook's indifference to the Forsters' work. Indeed the Captain Cook biographer J.C. Beaglehole describes Forster as completely unsuited to ocean voyaging and "one of the Admiralty's vast mistakes". "Dogmatic, humourless, suspicious, pretentious, contentious, censorious, demanding, rheumatic, he was a problem from any angle," writes Beaglehole. Indeed Forster was not particularly liked in England for his quarrelsome nature and Daniel Solander commented on his distasteful boasting following the Pacific voyage.

On the return of the Resolution a disagreement between Forster and the Admiralty arose over the authoring of the official account of the voyage. Forbidden from publishing anything until after the official volumes appeared, Forster instead put his son to work writing an account (A Voyage Round the World in His Britannic Majesty's Sloop Resolution..., 1777), which came out before Cook's narrative. The Forsters also published Characteres Generum Plantarum (1776), featuring 78 illustrations of plants encountered. J. Forster's own Observations made during a Voyage round the World appeared in 1778. Prepared by Forster just after the voyage was the volume Descriptiones Animalium, but this did not appear in print until some 46 years later, posthumously.

According to Forster, 260 new plants and 200 new animals were found on the voyage, and thousands of herbarium specimens were amassed. However, his Observations did not bring much in the way of financial rewards and father and son were forced to sell George's botanical drawings to Joseph Banks to make ends meet. In fact, Forster got himself into so much debt, largely through his penchant for expensive books and journals, that he was in danger of being put in debtors' prison. He published several other works in the 1770s, including a German translation of Arctic Zoology by Thomas Pennant, and later translated in German accounts of other voyages. He moved back to Germany in 1779 when appointed Professor of Natural History and Mineralogy at Halle, also taking on directorship of the botanic gardens there. He remained at Halle until his death.

Sources:
M. Hoare, 1975, The Tactless Philosopher: Johann Reinhold Forster (1729-1798)
T. Iredale, 1966, "Forster, Johann Reinhold (1729-1798)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1: 403-404
F.B. Sampson, 1985, Early New Zealand Botanical Art: 33-46.