Guts Muths, Johann Christoph Friedrich

Born Aug. 9, 1759, in Quedlinburg; died May 21, 1839, in Iben-thann. German educator; theoretician and practitioner of physical education.

From 1785 to 1837, Guts Muths worked in a philanthropic boarding school, where he taught geography, technology, gymnastics, and swimming. He provided a scientific foundation for the necessity of physical education and promoted the idea of improving national health through the systematic physical education of schoolchildren. Guts Muths demonstrated the difference between the motions involved in labor and those of physical exercise, and worked out a system of classification of sports and games. The methods of physical education proposed by Guts Muths were adopted in Denmark, Sweden, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and other countries.