Drobisch studied mathematics and philosophy at the University of Leipzig, where he subsequently became a professor. He wrote his habilitation in 1824. From 1826 to 1868 he served as ordinarius (full professor) in mathematics, and from 1842 on as ordinarius in philosophy. He was rector of the university of Leipzig in 1840–41 and served as dean of the philosophical faculty several times. Drobisch made contributions to philosophical and mathematical logic, set theory, quantitative linguistics and empirical psychology. Drobisch was strongly influenced by Johann Friedrich Herbart.
In 1834, Drobisch joined the Count Jablonowski Society of the Sciences in Leipzig. In 1846 he was a co-founder of the Saxony's Royal Society of the Sciences, whose successor organisation has named a medal in his honour. In 1868, Drobisch resigned from the mathematics department to devote himself to philosophy. He was made an honorary citizen of Leipzig in 1876. In his later years, Drobisch's blindness progressed, making scholarly work impossible from the mid-1880s on. Wilhelm Wundt, a pioneer of German empirical psychology, held Drobisch's funeral oration and acknowledged his influence. Drobisch was one of the forerunners of the neo-Kantian revival of the 1860s. Friedrich Albert Lange criticized him and Herbart in his Foundations of Mathematical Psychology (1865).
Works
1834: Beiträge zur Orientierung über Herbart's System der Philosophie. [Contributions to the Orientation in Herbart's System of Philosophy.] Significantly revised and expanded editions in 1851 and 1863.
1836: Neue Darstellung der Logik nach ihren einfachsten Verhältnissen. Nebst einem logisch-mathematischen Anhange. [New presentation of Logic in its Most Basic Relations. With a Logico–Mathematical Appendix.]
