BornGauernitz near Meissen, (Sachsen, Germany), 15 December 1745
DiedDresden, (Germany), 19 September 1801
From 1776, Johann Köhler served as Inspektor (curator), and from about 1785 until his death as Oberinspektor (director), of both the Kunstkammer and the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon in Dresden. He published a list of “nebulae” in 1780. The list included several independent discoveries of deep-sky objects that eventually received numbers in Charles Messier ’s catalog. Köhler’s instruments also were apparently used by Alexander von Humboldt on his first voyage to South America.