Nonetheless, Heeren did not let his powers wane in his later years. He widened the scope of his university lectures to include recent work in demography and geography. After Johann Gottfried Eichhorn’s death in 1827 he took over the editorship of the "Göttische Gelehrte Anzeigen." He deposited in the Göttingen Societät der Wissenschaften his research materials on the sources used by various ancient historians and geographers, inspiring a number of his students, most notably Georg Heinrich Pertz, to embark on similar research in other historical periods. Nonetheless, he would live to see his own reputation eclipsed by members of a rising generation, with his own colleagues among those who joined the attacks on certain of his own chief works.