Education
Gottling developed and sold chemical assay kits and studied processes for extracting sugar from beets to supplement his meagre university salary. He studied the chemistry of sulphur, arsenic, phosphorus, and mercury. He wrote texts on analytical chemistry and studied oxidation of organic compounds by nitric acid.
He studied pharmacy at Langensalza under Johann Christian Wiegleb, and from 1775 worked at the Hofapotheke (court pharmacy) in Weimar.