William Fuchs

* Levoca, 1 August 1802 – † Belgrade, 28 January 1853 / chemist, geologist, mining engineer ; ; János Sámuel Fuchs (Levco, 16 October 1770 – Lemberg, 25 January 1817) was the son of a Lutheran bishop and a high school teacher. He completed high school in his hometown and in Lemberg, where his father was employed. In 1817, he returned to Levoca with his widowed mother and seven siblings and in 1819 became a pharmacist's assistant in the city. In 1826–1829, he studied pharmacy, chemistry and botany at the University of Vienna and obtained his doctorate in chemistry in January 1829. In his thesis, he dealt with the chemical analysis of the Brennenberg brown coal. During his stay in Vienna, he published the work Flora Schneebergensis in five volumes with László Kralovaszky, which presented the flora of the area around the 2,076 m high Schneeberg mountain. Later, his interest turned to mining and from 1833 he attended lectures on mining at the Academy in Selmecbánya. From 1834, he participated in a minemaster's internship first in Szomolnok and then in Agordó in Tyrol. In 1836, he became a minemaster in Szászkabánya in the Banat (now Romania). In 1838–1844, he was the mine manager in Szomolnok, and in 1844–1848, the chief mine manager and mining councilor in Selmecbánya. The Vienna Academy of Sciences elected him a corresponding member in June 1848. The ; During the War of Independence of 1848/49, he served as the chairman of the metallurgical and financial department in the revolutionary government. He also established a gunpowder factory, which led to his being in hiding for years after the failure of the War of Independence. In 1851, the Serbian government entrusted him with the management of Serbian mining. He drafted the first Serbian mining law. ; ; His main works: ; Ueber den Einfluss der Gestalt des Terrains auf die Resultate barometricscher und trigonomitischer Höhenmessung…, 1843, ; Die Venetianer Alpen, 1844, ; Beiträge zur Lehre von Erzlagerstätten…, 1846, ; Einige Bemerkungen über die Lagerungsverhältnisse der Venetianer Alpen, 1851.