MULLER, KARL OTFRIED (1797-1840) , German scholar, was born at Brieg in Silesia on Aug. 28, 1797. He was educated partly in Breslau, partly in Berlin, and his first book, Aegineticorum liber, was published in 1817. In 1819 he became professor of ancient literature at Gottingen, but in 1839 political disturbances led him to travel. After investigating Athens and other places, he started excavations at Delphi. He died of inter mittent fever at Athens on Aug. 1, 1840. His aim was to form a conception of Greek life as a whole, and his work marks an epoch in Hellenic study.
Among his historical works the foremost place belongs to his Geschichte hellenischer Stdmme and Stddte: Orchomenos and die Minyer (1820), and Die Dorier (1824; Eng. trans. by H. Tufnell and Cornewall Lewis, 1830). He introduced a new standard of accuracy in the cartography of ancient Greece. In 1828 he pub
lished Die Etrusker, a treatise on Etruscan antiquities. His Pro legomena zu einer wissenschaftlichen Mythologie (1825; Eng. trans., J. Leitch, 1844) prepared the way for the scientific investi gation of myths ; while the study of ancient art was promoted by his Handbuch der Archdologie der Kunst (1830; Eng. trans., J. Leitch, 1847), and Denkmdler der alten Kunst (1832), which he wrote in association with C. Osterley. In 2840 appeared in Eng land his History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (published in Germany, 1841).
See memoir of his life by his brother Eduard, prefixed to the post humous edition of K. 0. Miiller's Kleine deutsche Schriften (1847). A biography composed from his letters was published by 0 and E. Kern, K. 0. Muller, Lebensbild in Briefen an seine Eltern (1908).