 After studying philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, he became the tutor of the Count of Leiningen-Hartenburg.When he went with him to Paris, he met Pierre Lefort (1676-1754), a nephew of Peter the Great's admiral, who invited him to join him in Russia, where Peter the Great took him into service as a librarian.Some years later, in 1714, he became secretary of the department of medicine, and librarian of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which had opened in 1703.