 His father was saltworks archivist and Hesse-Hanau "Rentmeister" (master of the bursary) (saltworks of Nauheim).He had a twin brother named Daniel Isaak.After finishing "Gymnasium" (secondary school) in Idstein in 1773, Langsdorf studied, among other things, philosophy, law, and mathematics at University of Göttingen from 1774 until autumn of 1776 with Abraham Gotthelf Kästner and then until 1777 at the University of Giessen.