Christoph Heidmann
Christoph Heidmann was a German philologist and geographer.
Life
Born and raised in Helmstedt, Christoph Heidmann studied in Helmstedt from 1602 and in 1612 received a professorship in rhetoric at the University of Helmstedt. As a university professor, he introduced students such as Hermann Conring and Christoph Schrader to philology. Schrader was appointed to Heidmann's chair in 1636, a decade after Heidmann's resignation.During the temporary closure of the university due to the plague and the turmoil of the Thirty Years' War in 1625/1626, Heidmann left his hometown and the Academia Julia. In 1626 he accepted a call from the Academia Sorana to Sorø in Denmark as a professor of oratory. He died in Sorø during his first semester.
Through his posthumously published works on the geography of Europe and Palestine, Christoph Heidmann is considered one of the founders of scientific geography. In 1624 his lecture on Palestine was the first of its kind in the German-speaking world.