On the 11th of May 1820 he took his doctor's degree; in the same year he qualified as Privatdozent at the university of Erlangen.
His earlier papers were mostly concerned with crystallography, and the reputation they gained him led to his appointment as Privatdozent at Konigsberg, where in 1828 he became extraordinary, and in 1829 ordinary, professor of mineralogy and physics.
In 1847 he began to act as Privatdozent in the university, and founded with Reinhardt the Archiv fiir pathologische Anatomie and Physiologic, which, after his collaborator's death in 1852, he carried on alone, and in 1848 he went as a member of a government commission to investigate an outbreak of typhus in upper Silesia.
In 1883 he went to Kiel, becoming Privatdozent, and there he began the studies in Maxwell's electro-magnetic theory which a few years later resulted in the discoveries that rendered his name famous.
At Jena, where he lectured as a Privatdozent at the university, he contributed to the Athenaeum the aphorisms and essays in which the principles of the Romantic school are most definitely stated.