Johan Christian Poggendorff , born in Hamburg on December 29th, 1769 and died in Berlin on January 24th, 1877 was a German physicist.

He is named director of the scientific magazine Annalen der Physik und Chemie in 1824.

Whereas he worked at the University of Berlin, he invents the Battery with bichromate in 1842.

He describes the Illusion of Poggendorff in 1860: the two parts of an oblique segment masked by a secant band seem shifted.

It improves the angular mechanism of reading used on the Galvanomètre S, which allows him of measurement of the variation about the nanoampère.