German geographer and cartographer who conducted trigonometric surveys in Prussia and taught geodesy at the Bauakademie in Berlin. He taught cartography and produced a pioneering and influential thematic atlas which provided maps of flora, fauna, climate, geology, diseases and a range of other information. A nephew Hermann Berghaus also worked in cartography. He was trained as a surveyor, and after volunteering for active service under General Tauentzien in 1813, joined the staff of the Prussian trigonometrical survey in 1816. He carried on a geographical school at Potsdam where he trained Heinrich Lange, August Heinrich Petermann, his nephew Hermann Berghaus and others, and long held the professorship of applied mathematics at the Bauakademie.