Christoph Samuel John
Christoph Samuel John (11 August 1747 – 1 September 1813) was a German missionary in the service of the Danish-Halle Mission in southern India at the Danish settlement of Tranquebar (Tharangambadi). He collected specimens of local natural history which he sent to collaborators and several species have been named from his collections including the plant "Impatiens johnii", the snake "Eryx johnii" and the fish genus "Johnius" and the species "Lutjanus johnii". Life and work. John was born in Frobersgrün near Greiz to priest Julius Gerhard (1708–80) and Catharina Dorothea Pyrläus (c. 1710–80). He studied theology at the  university of Halle while also teaching at an orphanage under Johann Georg Knapp. He was ordained in 1769 at Copenhagen and went with the mission to Tranquebar along with Wilhelm Jacobus Müller, leaving on 16 March 1771 after a previous plan to sail on January 6, 1770, had to be cancelled by winter ice. In India he lived in poverty for a while and then began to follow the system of Serampore to be involved in education. He then became involved in establishing a school for the children of Europeans as well as one for Indians where the children paid  for the education by working on plantations. The funding crunch was brought on by the clash between England and Denmark and John made use of local teachers. John was influenced into the study of natural history by Johann Gerhard König and began to collect specimens. He sent fishes, along with illustrations made by natives to Patrick Russell and to Marcus Élieser Bloch in Berlin. He also sent plant specimens to William Roxburgh. Russell named "Eryx johnii" and Bloch named "Lutjanus johnii" after him. John could speak English, Portuguese and Tamil apart from German. John fell afoul of many in the  mission and faced much opposition to his involvement in education. John married Christina Sophia Guldberg at Tranquebar on 27 November 1776. John suffered from blindness and lung disease and died of a stroke in Tranquebar and is buried at the New Jerusalem Cemetery.