Ernst Siegfried Becher

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Ernst Siegfried Becher (born July 2, 1884 in Reinshagen , † April 1, 1926 in Breslau ) was a German zoologist .

family

Ernst Siegfried Becher was the son of the elementary school teacher Ernst Becher and a woman named Hulda, whose father was the grinder Peter Daniel Küpper (1821–1862) and their mother Amalie Tesche (1829–1880). The paternal grandfather was the bricklayer Johann Christian Becher (1822–1895), the grandmother Regina Nuvertne (1830–1873). His brother Hellmut Becher was an anatomist and university professor, his brother Erich Becher a philosopher and psychologist and his brother Erwin Becher a medical doctor.

Ernst Siegfried Becher himself remained unmarried.

Live and act

Ernst Siegfried Becher went to a secondary school in Remscheid and during this time carried out physical-chemical experiments with his brothers. In the field of biology, he dealt in particular with the work of Darwin and Ernst Haeckel . In 1902 he began to study the natural sciences, especially zoology, which he completed with an award-winning dissertation. During his studies he heard from Hubert Ludwig , Walter Voigt , Adolf Strubell, Borgert and Alexander Koenig . In 1906, the "Epistemological Investigations on the Stuart Mills Theory" was the first major publication on physiology that he had compiled.

From 1908 to 1914, Becher worked as an assistant to Johann Wilhelm Spengel at the Zoological Institute of the University of Giessen. He dealt with echinoderms and examined the fundamentals of the forms of calcareous skeletons and the physiology and physics of the body. Psycholamarckist hints can be found in his work on natural philosophy , although he partially maintained the relationship to vitalism . From Becher's point of view, design impressions and their residuals, which appeared as wholes or individualities, did not result from processes in the brain. From his point of view, it is an influence that can already be found in uniform protoplasmic masses and must therefore be part of the general basic properties of the living substance.

In the fall of 1914, Becher accepted an appointment as full professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Rostock. There he mostly worked with examinations on the polarizing microscope, which he tried to improve. In 1921 he worked microtechnically for the real staining of cell nuclei with dyes (oxyanthraquinones and naphthoquinones). At the same time he invented a method very similar to the pigment printing process in the field of photography and received patents in this field.

In 1921, Becher succeeded his former teacher Spengel at the University of Giessen. While working in Giessen, he suffered from the problems of the post-war period and became increasingly ill. Since he preferred optical investigations, he researched the behavior of test animals (daphnids) in different colored, predominantly ultraviolet light.

Becher received a call from the University of Tübingen, which he did not follow. In autumn 1925 he moved to Breslau and died there a little later as a result of a long-term illness.

On October 19, 1916, Ernst Siegfried Becher was accepted as a member ( matriculation number 3384 ) of the Leopoldina .

Publications (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Johann Gerhard Helmcke:  Becher, Ernst Siegfried. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 1, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1953, ISBN 3-428-00182-6 , p. 689 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ Albert Wangerin (Ed.): Leopoldina . Official organ of the Imperial Leopoldine-Carolinian German Academy of Natural Scientists. 52nd issue. On commission at Wilh. Engelmann in Leipzig, Halle 1916, p. 70 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).
personal data
SURNAME Becher, Ernst Siegfried
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH July 2, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Reinshagen
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1926
Place of death Wroclaw