Charles Wachsmuth

Charles Wachsmuth (born September 13, 1829 in Hanover , † February 7, 1896 in Burlington , Iowa ) was a German-American paleontologist .

Life

He was the son of Friedrich Wachsmuth , lost his mother at an early age and was also supposed to study law. But at the age of 16 he got health problems that prevented further training. In 1852 he emigrated to the USA and initially worked for a Hamburg trading company in New York City, but then, since the city was detrimental to his health, went to Burlington, where he ran a retail business. On the advice of his doctor, he began collecting fossils in order to be outdoors as much as possible. In the course of time he built up the world's largest private collection of fossil sea lilies and was considered an expert in this field.

In 1865 he gave up his business and visited Europe. Then he devoted himself to paleontology. In 1873 Louis Agassiz , whom he first met in 1864, persuaded him to donate his collection to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University and to become a curator and professor there. In 1874 he made another trip through Europe, Asia and Africa. In London he visited the collection of the British Museum, to which he also donated copies. After Agassiz's death he returned to Burlington, where he began working with the collector and lawyer Frank Springer (1848–1927). They published standard works on fossil sea lilies and Wachsmuth built up a second collection in a few years, which even surpassed the first. He undertook collecting trips to the southern states of the USA and in recent years, interrupted by his illnesses, worked on a monograph on the fossil sea lilies (crinoids) of North America, which was only published after his death.

He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science , the Geological Society of America , the Iowa Academy of Science , the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Philadelphia Academy of Science .

Fonts

• with Springer: Revision of Palaeocrinoidea, 3 parts, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1879 to 1886
• with Springer: Discovery of the Ventral Structure of Taxocrinus and Haplocrinus, and Consequent Modifications in the Classification of the Crinoidea, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1889
• with Springer: The Perisomic Plates of the Crinoids, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Philadelphia, 1891
• with Springer: The North American Crinoida Camerata, Memoirs of the Museum of Comparative Zoology 1897

literature

• Biography in Benjamin Gue: History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century. Volume 4, 1903, Wikisource

Web links

• Biography from Biographical Review of Des Moines County 1905
• Obituary by F. Bather, Geological Magazine April 1896