Background
Titius was born in Konitz, Royal Prussia to Jakob Tietz, a merchant and council member from Konitz, and Maria Dorothea, née Hanow.
Astronomer mathematician physicist university professor
Titius was born in Konitz, Royal Prussia to Jakob Tietz, a merchant and council member from Konitz, and Maria Dorothea, née Hanow.
Tietz attended school in Danzig (Gdańsk) and studied at the University of Leipzig (1749-1752).
His original name was Johann Tietz, but as was customary in the 18th century, when he became a university professor, he Latinized his surname to Titius. He died in Wittenberg, Electorate of Saxony. He is best known for formulating the Titius–Bode law, and for using this rule to predict the existence of a celestial object at 2.8 AU from the sun.
This happened in 1766, when he inserted his observation on planetary distances into a German translation of Charles Bonnet"s book Contemplation de la Nature.
His suggestion that the object would necessarily be small was later superseded by the claim of Johann Elert Bode for a planet-like object, subsequently identified as being Ceres. In part because of the Titius-Bode law, the first four minor planets were at first labeled full-fledged planets.
After a fifteen-year hiatus, other minor planets started to be discovered at steadily increasing rates, and Ceres and company were eventually relabeled "minor planets" or "asteroids". Because of its spherical shape, Ceres was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006.
The asteroid 1998 Titius and the crater Titius on the Moon are named in his honour.
Titius published a number of works on other areas in, such as a set of conditions and rules for performing experiments, and he was particularly focused in thermometry. In 1765 he presented a survey of thermometry up to that date. He wrote about the metallic thermometer constructed by Hanns Loeser.
In his treatises on both theoretical and experimental physics, he incorporated the findings of other scientists, such as the descriptions of experiments written by Georg Wolfgang Kraft in 1738.
Titius was also active in, particularly in classification of organisms and minerals. His biological work was influenced by Linnaeus.
Lehrbegriff der Naturgeschichte Zum ersten Unterrichte, his most extensive publication in, was on systematic classification of plants, animals, and minerals, as well as the elemental substances ether, light, fire, air, and water.