JOHANN FRIEDRICH LUDWIG HAUSMANN (1782-1859), German mineralogist, was born at Hanover on the 22nd of February 1782. He was educated at Gottingen, where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. After making a geological tour in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in 1807, he was two years later placed at the head of a government mining establishment in Westphalia, and he established a school of mines at Ctausthal in the Harz mountains. In 1811 he was appointed professor of technology and mining, and afterwards of geology and mineralogy in the university of Gottingen, and this chair he occupied until a short time before his death. He was also for many years secretary of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Gottingen. He published observations on geology and mineralogy in Spain and Italy as well as in central and northern Europe: he wrote on gypsum, pyrites, felspar, tachylite, cordierite and on some eruptive rocks, and he devoted much attention to the crystals developed during metallurgical processes. He died at Hanover on the 26th of December 1859.
Grundlinien einer Encyklopadie der Bergwerkswissenschaften (181 I); Reise durch Skandinavien (5 vols., 181 I-1818); Handbuch der Mineralogie (3 vols., 1813; 2nd ed., 1828-1847).