page_title: Carsten Niebuhr
section_title: Early life and education
hierarchical_section_title: Carsten Niebuhr / Early life and education
caption_attribution_description: English: portrait of Carsten Niebuhr or Karsten Niebuhr (17 March 1733 – 26 April 1815 )
context_page_description: Carsten Niebuhr or Karsten Niebuhr, a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark, is renowned for his participation in the Royal Danish Arabia Expedition. He was the father of the Danish-German statesman and historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr, who published an account of his father's life in 1817.
context_section_description: Niebuhr was born in Lüdingworth (now a part of Cuxhaven, Lower Saxony) in what was then Bremen-Verden. His father Barthold Niebuhr (1704-1749) was a successful farmer and owned his own property. Carsten and his sister were educated at home by a local school teacher, then he attended the Latin School in Otterndorf, near Cuxhaven.
  Originally Niebuhr had intended to become a surveyor, but in 1757 he went to the Georgia Augusta University of Göttingen, at this time Germany's most progressive institution of higher education. Niebuhr was probably a strong student because in 1760 Johann David Michaelis (1717-1791) recommended him as a participant in the Royal Danish Arabia Expedition (1761-1767), mounted by Frederick V of Denmark (1722-1766). For a year and a half before the expedition Niebuhr studied mathematics, cartography and navigational astronomy under Tobias Mayer (1723-1762), one of the premier astronomers of the 18th century, and the author of the Lunar Distance Method for determining longitude. Niebuhr's observations during the Arabia Expedition proved the accuracy and the practicality of this method for use by mariners at sea.
caption: Carsten Niebuhr in the attire of a distinguished Arab in Yemen, gift from al-Mahdi 'Abbas, Imam of Yemen
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4659", "Image ImageLength": "6766", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image Make": "Phase One", "Image Model": "IQ180", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "240", "Image YResolution": "240", "Image PlanarConfiguration": "1", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Macintosh)", "Image DateTime": "2016:09:23 09:23:04", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "722", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7773", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/90", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "50", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:06:16 12:51:21", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:06:16 12:51:21", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "6491853/1000000", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3494", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "4562", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF BodySerialNumber": "FP031957", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[1, 1, 1, 1]", "EXIF LensModel": "1.0 mm f/1.0"}