Carl Gustav Bernoulli

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Carl Gustav Bernoulli (born January 24, 1834 in Basel , † May 18, 1878 in San Francisco ) was a Swiss doctor , botanist , pharmacist, explorer and archaeologist from the family of scholars Bernoulli . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " Bernoulli ".

Life

Gustav Bernoulli was born in 1834 as the son of the pharmacist Johann Jakob Bernoulli (1802-1892) and Susanna, b. Werthemann (1806–1866), born. After high school he studied medicine in Basel, Würzburg, Berlin and Paris. After the state examination, he worked as a general practitioner and received his doctorate in Basel in 1857. med.

Probably through the mediation of Karl Gustav Jung , who was friends with his father, he got to Alexander von Humboldt . He recommended Central America and Guatemala as research fields. In 1858 he traveled to Guatemala via Berlin - London - Liverpool - Jamaica . There he first practiced as a doctor in the Guatemalan capital. He later moved to the Costa Grande and founded a coffee plantation there with a Basel resident, and reopened a doctor's practice and a pharmacy.

In 1868 he returned to Basel for three months. To further his education he traveled to Berlin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, London and Paris. On the way back from New Orleans to Colón, the ship came off the route in a storm and failed on a coral reef on the northwest coast of Cuba. Bernoulli narrowly escaped death.

On extensive trips he explored the jungle area, put on extensive botanical and zoological collections and visited Copán, Palenque and Tikal, the ruined cities of the Maya. In Tikal in 1877 he discovered the carved panels - originally parts of a ceiling - made of sapodilla wood, on which the Maya had left a complex calendar system based on astronomical observations. The Tikal tablets were shipped to Basel with the help of Franz Sarg in 1878 and have been an important part of the collection of the Museum of Cultures in Basel ever since .

In 1878, after twenty years in Guatemala, his poor health, caused by malaria and liver disease, prompted him to liquidate the practice and his property and finally to return to Basel. On the way back he died in San Francisco (USA) in 1878 at the age of 44.

In recognition of his botanical research, two fossil plant species found in the Keuper layers near Augst (BL) were named after him. The Bernoullia helvetica and Bernoullia augusta . A tree found in Central and South America was discovered in Tikal in 1936 and was named Bernoullia flammea Oliver .

Works

  • The Vascular Cryptogams of Switzerland, Diss., Basel 1857.
  • Overview of the so far known species by Theobroma , Zurich 1869.

literature

  • D. Drude: Journey of Messrs. Dr. Bernoulli and R. Cario from Retaluleu in Guatemala to Comitán in South Mexico, in the summer of 1877. Petermann's Geographische Mitteilungen 24 (1878).
  • Viktor Hantzsch :  Bernoulli, Gustav . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 46, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1902, p. 432 f.
  • Paul Hinderling: Basel researcher among foreign peoples , Museum für Völkerkunde, Basel 1956.
  • René Bernoulli-Sutter: The Bernoulli family. Helbing & Lichtenhahn, Basel 1972, No. 469, p. 147.
  • Valerie Meyer-Holdampf: A Basler out and about in the jungle of Guatemala. Carl Gustav Bernoulli (1834-1878). Doctor, botanist and discoverer of the Tikal plates. Basel 1997.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Bernoulli, Carl Gustav
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss doctor, botanist, pharmacist, explorer and archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1834
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH May 18, 1878
Place of death San Francisco