Listing was born in Frankfurt and died in Göttingen. In 1847, he wrote a famous article on topology, although he had introduced the term in correspondence some years earlier. He (independently) discovered the properties of the half-twisted strip at the same time as August Ferdinand Möbius, and went further in exploring the properties of strips with higher-order twists (paradromic rings).
A reprint of (part of) his famous 1847 article introducing Topology, published in Vorstudien zur Topologie, Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp. 67, 1848.
