Ferdinand von Roemer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bust of Ferdinand Roemer in the Geological Museum of the University of Wroclaw

Carl Ferdinand von Roemer (born January 5, 1818 in Hildesheim , † December 14, 1891 in Breslau ) was a German geologist , paleontologist and mineralogist . As a university lecturer , he became the "father of Texan geology".

family

Roemer was the youngest of seven children (four sons, three daughters) of the lawyer and judiciary Friedrich Roemer (1776–1821) and Charlotte born. Lüntzel (1786-1843). In the spring of 1869 , at the age of 51, he married Katharina Schäfer , with whom he had been childless for 23 years; however, he had taken in two of his wife's nieces as foster children. His brothers were the well-known geologist Friedrich Adolph Roemer and the Hildesheim senator and member of the Reichstag, Hermann Roemer .

Life

According to family tradition, Roemer first studied law at the Georg-August University of Göttingen in the years 1836–1839 in order to pursue a career as a civil servant. During the summer semester of 1838 that he spent with his brother Friedrich Adolph in Heidelberg, he attended lectures by the zoologist and paleontologist Heinrich Georg Bronn . However, since he was not admitted to the judge examination in Göttingen for political reasons, he then studied zoology , anatomy , physiology , anthropology , chemistry and physics , but also mineralogy , crystallography , geognosy , geology and paleontology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin where he on 10 May 1842 in paleontology at Leopold Ranke about the mussel genus Astarte to Dr. phil. PhD .

Prussia

On August 1, 1842, he began with the highest Prussian mining authority with the stratigraphic investigation of the Rhenish Slate Mountains using fossils ( biostratigraphy ). In 1844, the result of these investigations was The Rhenish Transitional Mountains . The outstanding importance of this work lies in the recognition that the so-called older greywacke cannot be assigned to the Silurian system - as represented by Roderick Murchison and Adam Sedgwick . Instead, he recognized the position of these rocks as a " ... lower group of the Devonian system ... ", that is as deep part of the Murchison and Sedgewick even outsourced Devon . For this unit, André Hubert Dumont coined the term "Unterdevon" in 1848.

Texas

In 1845 he traveled via New York City to Texas , where between November 1845 and May 8, 1847 between Galveston (Texas) and Houston , west in the New Braunfels and Fredericksburg area to the north near Waco in McLennan County, the fauna and Flora and the geological status of the country studied - also with trips to other southern states. Here he worked with the botanist Otfried Hans von Meusebach , among others .

Bonn

Then Roemer was from 1848 to 1855 private lecturer at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn . There he wrote his standard work Texas (1849) and the book The Chalk Formations of Texas and their Organic Inclusions (1852). During this time he conducted his geological studies all over Europe, for example in England , Italy , Spain , France , Ireland , Norway , Sweden , Russia as well as in Switzerland and Turkey .

Wroclaw

From Easter 1855 he was full professor of geology, palaeontology and mineralogy at the University of Breslau and director of the "Mineralogical Cabinet ", in which he presented his own mineralogical collection. Here he continued his work as a writer and published in 1860 The Silurian Fauna of Western Tennessee . In 1864/65 he was rector of the University of Breslau.

Roemer helped Heinrich Georg Bronn with the 3rd edition of his Lethaea geognostica (1851-1856) and worked on the expanded edition of Lethaea palaeozoica (1876-1883). In 1862 he was commissioned to revise the geological atlas of Upper Silesia , after which he published the results of his investigations in 1870 in his three-volume work Geology of Upper Silesia .

Honors

Fonts

  • The Rhenish transition mountains. A palaeontological-geognostic representation. Hahn, Hanover 1844.
  • Further news of the occurrence of the Posidonomya Becheri and other fossils indicative of the Culm strata in the Sudetes and Moravia, after the observations of Mr. Heinrich Wolf in Vienna. In: Journal of the German Geological Society . Vol. 12, 1860, pp. 513-516 .
  • About the discovery of Devonian fossils on the eastern slope of the Altvater Mountains. In: Journal of the German Geological Society. Vol. 17, 1865, pp. 579-593 .
  • Geology of Upper Silesia. Nischkowsky, Breslau 1870.

literature

  • Carl Hintze :  Roemer, Ferdinand . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 53, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1907, pp. 451-458.
  • Peter Krüger:  Roemer, Carl Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 723 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Wolfhart Langer: The paleontologist and geologist Carl Ferdinand Roemer. In: Nature and Museum. Vol. 121, No. 12, 1991, pp. 381-386.
  • Frederic W. Simonds: Dr. Ferdinand von Roemer, the father of the geology of Texas; his life and work. In: The American Geologist. Vol. 29, No. 3, 1902, pp. 131-140 , (Reprinted as: A geologist of the last century. Dr. Ferdinand von Roemer, the father of the geology of Texas: his life and work. In: The Geological Magazine. New Series, Decade 4, Vol. 9, No. 9, 1902, pp. 412-417 ).
  • Willi Ziegler : Historical subdivisions of the Devonian. In: Michael R. House, Colin T. Scrutton, Michael G. Basset (Eds.): The Devonian System (= Special Papers in Palaeontology. 23). The Palaeontological Association, London 1979, pp. 23-47.

Web links

Wikisource: Ferdinand Roemer  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Langer 1991
  2. ↑ Roemer 1844, p. 15
  3. ↑ Ziegler 1979
  4. ↑ Rector's speeches (HKM)
  5. ↑ Members of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors 1857
  6. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 204.
  7. ↑ Ferdinand Roemer. Members of the predecessor academies. Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 15, 2016 .
  8. ^ Member entry of Ferdinand Roemer at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on March 15, 2016.
  9. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Ferdinand Roemer (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 15, 2016.
  10. ^ Roemer, Carl Ferdinand Prof. accessed on February 3, 2013
personal data
SURNAME Roemer, Ferdinand von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roemer, Carl Ferdinand von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist, paleontologist, mineralogist; University professor and rector in Wroclaw
DATE OF BIRTH January 5, 1818
PLACE OF BIRTH Hildesheim , Kingdom of Hanover
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1891
Place of death Wroclaw , Province of Silesia