Georg Maurice Lowitz (1722 - 1774) was a German cartographer, astronomer and professor of mathematics. His youth is not documented, but his parents were Wolfgang Lowitz and Catherine Lobits. He was director of the observatory at Göttingen for a timne. In 1766 he travelled to Saint Petersburg, Russia, to join the Academy of Sciences. He observed the 1769 transit of Venus from Gureyev (modern Atyrau) north of the Caspian Sea. During the 1773-75 Pugachev Rebellion he was employed by Russia in making surveys to construct a canal between the Volga and the Don rivers when he was captured by Pugachev's Cossacks, and killed.