Moritz Ludwig Frankenheim was born in 1801 in Brunswick. His family was Jewish.[1] He attended the Gymnasium (high school) there and in Wolfenbüttel. Afterwards he went to Berlin to attend the Alma Mater Berolinensis (today Humboldt University of Berlin) to study physics. In 1823 he completed a dissertation titled Dissertatio de Theoria Gasorum et Vaporum Meditationes ("Contemplations on the scientific theory of gases and vapors"). Inspired by the research of his teacher Christian Samuel Weiss (1780-1856), he became interested in crystallography. In 1827 he moved to the University of Breslau, where he was assistant professor of physics, geography, and mathematics from 1827 to 1850. In 1850 he was promoted to the position of professor of these subjects. After his retirement, he first moved to Leipzig and then to Dresden, where he died in 1869 at the age of 67.
De Crystallorum Cohäsione (Cohesion of crystals), Breslau 1829.
Die Lehre von der Cohäsion, umfassend die Elasticität der Gase, die Elasticität und Cohärenz der flüssigen und festen Körper und die Krystallkunde (Theory of cohesion, encompassing the elasticity of gases, the elasticity and coherence of liquids and solids, and crystallography), Breslau 1835.
System der Krystalle (Crystal systems), Breslau 1842.
Krystallisation und Amorphie (Crystallization and amorphicity), Breslau 1851.
Völkerkunde (Ethnology), Breslau 1852.
Ueber das Entstehen und das Wachsen der Krystalle nach mikroskopischen Beobachtungen (On microscopic observations of the emergence and growth of crystals), 1860.
Zur Krystallkunde. I. Characteristiken der Krystalle. (On crystal structure. I. Characteristics of crystals.), Leipzig 1869.
J. Lima-de-Faria (Ed.): Historical Atlas of Crystallography, 1st Edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 1990, ISBN978-0792306498.
E. Scholz: Symmetrie, Gruppe, Dualität: Zur Beziehung zwischen theoretischer Mathematik und Anwendung in Kristallographie und Baustatik des 19. Jahrhunderts. (Symmetry, group, duality: On the relationship between theoretical mathematics and applications in crystallography and structural analysis in the 19th century.). In: Science Networks. Historical Studies, Vol. 1, Birkhäuser, Basel 1989, ISBN978-3-7643-1974-8.