Alexander Nicolaus Scherer (Russian: Александр Иванович Шерер, 30 December 1771, St. Petersburg - 16 October 1824, St. Petersburg) was a Russian-German chemist and pharmacologist.
In 1794 he graduated from the University of Jena, later serving as a lecturer at the gymnasium in Weimar. In 1800 he was appointed a professor of physics at the University of Halle, shortly afterwards working as a manager at a stoneware factory in Potsdam. In 1803 he relocated to the University of Dorpat as a professor of chemistry, and during the following year returned to St. Petersburg as a professor of chemistry and pharmacy at the medico-surgical academy. In 1815 he became a full member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences.[1]
Scherer was instrumental in the creation of the "Pharmaceutical Society of St. Petersburg", an institution in which he served as its first president.[2] [3]
He was an editor of the journals Allgemeines Journal der Chemie (from 1798 to 1803) and Allgemeine nordische Annalen der Chemie (from 1817 to 1822).[4] He was the author of Kurze Darstellung der chemischen Untersuchungen der Gasarten (Weimar, 1799), translated into English in 1800 as A short introduction to the knowledge of gaseous bodies.[5] Other principal works by Scherer include: