Gerhard Friedrich Müller

Gerhard Friedrich Müller was the official historiographer, curator of archives in the department of foreign affairs and secretary of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg. It was Müller who wrote to Voltaire, in Latin, in April 1746, to inform him of his election as a member of the Academy of Sciences (OVD3368a); Voltaire replied to this letter, similarly in Latin, on 28 June 1746 (OVD3423). Müller was clearly well placed to identify the material that Voltaire had asked for when he was preparing to write the second volume of his Histoire de l’empire de Russie sous Pierre le Grand (OVD21228).

• Michel Mervaud, ‘Le philosophe et l’amateur de consonnes: Voltaire et l’historien Gerhard Friedrich Müller’, Revue Voltaire, 3 (2003), p.301-21
• Joseph Lawrence Black, G. F. Müller and the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences, 1725-1783: First Steps in the Development of the Historical Sciences in Russia (Kingston-Montreal, 1986)