Adolf Bernhard Meyer
Adolf Bernhard Meyer or Aron Baruch Meyer (born October 11, 1840 in Hamburg , † February 5, 1911 in Berlin ) was a German natural scientist and anthropologist . His author's abbreviation is " Meyer, A. ". Within zoology , he was particularly active in the fields of primatology , ornithology and entomology and undertook extensive research trips to the Malay Archipelago for this purpose in the early 1870s . He had a second main creative phase as museum director in Dresden .
Life
Meyer studied medicine and natural sciences at the universities of Göttingen , Vienna , Berlin and Zurich . His wide-ranging interest in geography , ethnography and, last but not least, animal science made him want to travel to and explore unknown regions of the world.
A first major research trip took him in 1870 to the north of the equatorial island of Sulawesi , then still known as Celebes, and to the neighboring Philippines to the north . Two years later, Meyer traveled to New Guinea and was the first to cross the island at its narrowest point.
In 1874 Meyer succeeded Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach as director of the Royal Natural History Museum in Dresden and redesigned it fundamentally. First, a year later, in the course of the ongoing differentiation between the natural sciences and the humanities, he established the ethnological collections as a new part of the museum, which was then renamed the Royal Zoological and Anthropological-Ethnographic Museum in 1878 . This museum was the common predecessor of today's museums for ethnology and zoology in Dresden , both of which were established after 1945. The botanical objects in the collections, on the other hand, were transferred to the Royal Polytechnic in Dresden and the specialist botanical library to the Royal Library under Meyer's leadership . In 1877 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .
Under Meyer's aegis, the museum's own magazine appeared for the first time in 1875, the "Messages from the Royal Zoological Museum in Dresden". Around 1880 he translated the works of Philip Lutley Sclater , Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and became an advocate of Darwinian theories. In 1897 Meyer organized a large ornithological congress in Dresden and made important contributions to the theory of the concept of species .
After Meyer had undertaken two long study trips to important European and North American natural history museums around 1900 , he had the Dresden museum brought up to date with the latest research. Among other things, he separated the objects into a permanent collection for the public and a scientific study collection for research purposes, and he also introduced dust and fire-proof steel cabinets.
Meyer's retirement in 1906 marked the end of an era for this Dresden museum. He passed away five years later.
plant
A large number of animals were first described by Meyer and given a taxon . Are of birds including the, for example, Carola-parotia ( Parotia carolae ), the pennant carrier ( Pteridophora Alberti ), the Princess Stephanie Bird of Paradise ( Astrapia step haniae ), the Rotkappen- Mistelfresser ( Dicaeum geelvinkianum ) which takahē ( porphyrio hochstetteri ) and the Salvadori Spectacled Bird ( Zosterops salvadorii ).
In addition to his bird studies, he also dealt with primates. In this field he called among other things, the Sangihe Tarsier ( Tarsius sangirensis ), the Wolf's Mona Monkey ( Cercopithecus wolfi ) and tonkean macaque ( Macaca tonkeana ).
He also collected birds, beetles and butterflies , especially during his research trips to Southeast Asia . Today all of this is part of the collections of the Museum für Tierkunde Dresden . Further collecting tours took him through the Netherlands , Switzerland and Denmark .
Honors
The narrow-tailed sickle head , which lives in New Guinea and was discovered in 1884 and counts among the birds of paradise , is called Epimachus meyeri after Meyer . The red-winged bronze cuckoo ( Chrysococcyx meyerii ) is also named after him.
The storage and administration building of the State Natural History Collections in the northern Dresden district of Klotzsche is called Adolf-Bernhard-Meyer-Bau. In addition to the Museum of Animal Science and the Museum of Ethnology, the Museum of Mineralogy and Geology Dresden , the State Museum of Prehistory Dresden and the Natural History Central Library Dresden have their depots here .
Fonts (selection)
- The inhibitory nervous system of the heart . Berlin 1869.
- Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Your first publications on the "Origin of Species" along with a sketch of your life and a list of your writings. Erlangen 1870.
- Over three new parrots discovered in New Guinea . In: Negotiations of the Imperial-Royal Zoological-Botanical Society in Vienna . tape 24 , 1874, pp. 37-40 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Illustrations of bird skeletons . 2 vol., Dresden 1879–1890. doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.51853
- About the names Papua , Dayak and Alfuren . Vienna 1882. ( Online at papuaweb.org ; PDF; 1.3 MB)
- Memorial address given to James Cook on March 8, 1879 . Habel, Berlin 1882 ( digitized version )
- The deer antler collection in Moritzburg . 2 vol., Dresden 1883–1887.
- Publications of the Royal Ethnographic Museum in Dresden . 9 vols., Dresden 1881–1903.
- Together with Georg von der Gabelentz : Contributions to the knowledge of the Melanesian, Micronesian and Papuan languages, a first night on Hans Conon's von der Gabelentz works “The Melanesian Languages”. In: Treatises of the Philological-Historical Class of the Royal Saxon Society of Sciences in Leipzig, Volume 8, No. 4, 1882.
- Gurina in Obergailthal, Carinthia . Dresden 1885.
- The Hallstatt burial ground , Dresden 1885.
- Album of types I Philippines . 1885.
- Our capercaillie, rackel and black grouse and their varieties . With illustrations by Gustav Mützels . Vienna 1887.
- Album of Celebes types . Dresden 1889.
- Album of Filipino Types II . Dresden 1891.
- With Lionel William Wiglesworth : The Birds of Celebes and the Neighboring Islands. Berlin 1898.
- Album of Philippine Types III . Dresden 1904.
- American Libraries and Their Aspirations . 1906.
- Roman city of Agunt . 1908.
literature
- Jens Jakobitz, Martin Päckert: Adolf Bernhard Meyer: explorer, taxonomist and museologist. In: Senckenberg. Nature - Research - Museum. Volume 148, No. 4-6, 2018, pp. 99-100, ISSN 2191-5911 .
- Arthur Wichmann: Nova Guinea: résultats de l'expédition scientifique néerlandaise à la Nouvelle-Guinée en 1903 sous les auspieces de Arthur Wichmann . 2 History of the discovery of New Guinea (1828 to 1885). Bookshop and printer EJ Brill, Leiden 1910 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Otto Finsch, Adolf Bernhard Meyer: Birds from New Guinea, mostly from the Alps region on the southeast slope of the Owen Stanley Mountains (Horseshoe Mountains 7000-8000 'high), collected by Karl Hunstein. I. Paradiseidae . In: Journal for the entire ornithology . tape 2 , 1885, p. 369-391 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Otto Finsch, Adolf Bernhard Meyer: Birds from New Guinea, mostly from the Alps region on the southeast slope of the Owen Stanley Mountains (Horseshoe Mountains 7000-8000 'high), collected by Karl Hunstein. II. In: Journal for the entire ornithology . tape 3 , 1886, p. 1-29 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
- Tommaso Salvadori: Altre nuove specie di uccelli della Nuova Guinea e di Goram raccolto dal Signor LM L'Albertis . In: Annali del Museo civico di storia naturale di Genova . tape 6 , no. 2 , 1874, p. 81-88 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
Web links
- Literature by and about Adolf Bernhard Meyer in the catalog of the German National Library
- Website of the State Natural History Collections Dresden ( Memento from June 20, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Photo Meyers from the Australian National Library
- Extract from the album of Philippine Types III ( Memento from October 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Single receipts
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Meyer, Adolf Bernhard |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Meyer, Aron Baruch |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German scientist and anthropologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 11, 1840 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hamburg |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 5, 1911 |
| Place of death | Berlin |