Gmelin was born in Tübingen, the son of an apothecary. He was a gifted child and graduated with a medical degree at the age of 18. In 1730 he travelled to St Petersburg to lecture at the university, and in the following year was appointed professor of chemistry and natural history.
From 1733 to 1743 Gmelin made a journey of scientific exploration through Siberia. He described the position of the Yenisey river as a boundary between Europe and Asia and participated in measuring the lowest temperature ever recorded at Yeniseysk. He was also the first person to measure the fact that the level of the Caspian Sea was below that of the Mediterranean Sea.
Gmelin's major works were Flora Sibirica (4 vols., 1749-1750) and Reisen durch Sibirien (4 vols., 1753). He spent his final years as professor of medicine at the University of Tübingen, a post to which he was appointed in 1749.
The second, JohannGeorg (1709-1755), was appointed professor of chemistry and natural history in St Petersburg in 1731, and from 1733 tO 1743 was engaged in travelling through Siberia.
The third son, Philipp Friedrich (1721 1768), was extraordinary professor of medicine at Tubingen in 1750, and in 1755 became ordinary professor of botany and chemistry.
One of his nephews, Ferdinand Gottlob von Gmelin (1782-1848), became professor of medicine and natural,history at TUbingen in 1805, and another, Christian Gottlob (1792-1860), who in 1828 was one of the first to devise a process for the artificial manufacture of ultramarine, was professor of chemistry and pharmacy in the same university.
Samuel Gottlieb Gmelin (July 4, 1744 - June 27, 1774) was a German physician, botanist and explorer.
Gmelin was born at Tuebingen in a well known family of naturalists.
Gmelin was the author of Historia Fucorum (1768), the first work dedicated to marine biology, dealing exclusively with algae and the first using the binomial system of nomenclature.
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