Friedrich Müller was an Austrian

Austria

Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 linguist

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

 and ethnologist who originated the term Hamito-Semitic languages

Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...

for what are now called the Afro-Asiatic languages

Afro-Asiatic languages

The Afroasiatic languages , also known as Hamito-Semitic, constitute one of the world's largest language families, with about 375 living languages...

.

Biography

He studied at the University of Göttingen. His studies were completed at the University of Vienna

University of Vienna

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world...

 (1853-1857), where he was librarian from 1858 to 1866, and then became extraordinary and then ordinary (1869) professor of comparative philology and Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

. He was a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Austrian Academy of Sciences is a legal entity under the special protection of the Federal Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every field, particularly in fundamental research...

, and was one of the highest authorities on comparative philology and ethnology and the relations of the two sciences, being so regarded in particular by Theodor Benfey

Theodor Benfey

This is about the philologist. For the Theodor Benfey who developed a spiral periodic table of the elements in 1964 -- Otto Theodor Benfey -- see Alternative periodic tables....

.

Theories

According to the Müller's classification, followed by Robert Needham Cust

Robert Needham Cust

Robert Needham Cust was a British colonial administrator and linguist.He was educated at Eton College, Trinity College, Cambridge, Haileybury and the College of Fort William, Calcutta, graduating from the last-named institution in 1844. He then worked for the East India Company, in Hoshiarpur and...

, the main subgroups of the Hamito-Semitic languages are: (1) Semitic; (2) Hamitic; (3) Nuba-Fula; (4) Nigerian or Negro languages; (5) Bantu; and (6) Hottentot-Bushman.

The prominent German zoologist Ernst Haeckel

Ernst Haeckel

The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...

 mentioned Müller when he formulated his own racialist theory about higher and lower races:

The Caucasian, or Mediterranean man (Homo Mediterraneus), has from time immemorial been placed at the head of all the races of men, as the most highly developed and perfect. It is generally called the Caucasian race, but as, among all the varieties of the species, the Caucasian branch is the least important, we prefer the much more suitable appellation proposed by Friedrich Müller, namely, that of Mediterranese. For the most important varieties of this species, which are moreover the most eminent actors in what is called “Universal History,” first rose to a flourishing condition on the shores of the Mediterranean.… This species alone (with the exception of the Mongolian) has had an actual history; it alone has attained to that degree of civilization which seems to raise men above the rest of nature.

Works

Besides contributing largely on comparative philology and etnnology to the Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft and the Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, and editing these periodicals for a time, Müller wrote:

• Reise der österreichischen Fregatte Novara, linguistic and the ethnological parts (1867-73)
• Allgemeine Ethnographie (1873)
• Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft (1876-87) Facsimile reprint, 2004 (ISBN 348712047X)