Franz Hilgendorf

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franz Martin Hilgendorf (born December 5, 1839 in Neudamm (Mark Brandenburg), † July 5, 1904 in Berlin ) was a German zoologist and paleontologist .

Franz Hilgendorf

Life

Franz Hilgendorf was born on December 5, 1839 in Neudamm (Mark Brandenburg). He attended high school in Königsberg (Neumark) from 1851 to 1854 and then the "Zum Grauen Kloster" high school in Berlin, which he completed in 1858 with the Abitur. During his school days he pursued scientific studies in the local area. In October 1859 he enrolled at the University of Berlin in the field of philology . There he was involved in founding the Brandenburgia fraternity (since 1875 Arminia). After four semesters he moved to Tübingen, where he accompanied Friedrich August von Quenstedt to an excavation in the Steinheim basin during the summer of 1862 . In May 1863 Hilgendorf received his doctorate with his thesis "Contributions to the knowledge of freshwater limestone at Steinheim". He continued his studies at the Zoological Museum Berlin . He worked in the chemical laboratory and learned the basics of museology.

With investigations on fossil snails of the species Planorbis multiformis (today: Gyraulus trochiformis Stahl) from the Steinheim Basin , he succeeded in providing the first paleontological evidence of Darwin's theory of evolution (continuous transition from one species to another)

From January 1868 Hilgendorf was entrusted as Brehm's successor with the management of the Hamburg Zoological Garden and Aquarium, but only stayed until November 1, 1870. From April 1871 to December 31, 1872 he worked as a librarian at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , which he From 1877 on as a member and as a private lecturer at the Dresden Polytechnic . In 1873, on the recommendation of the Prussian Ministry of Culture, he was appointed lecturer at the Imperial Medical Academy of Tokyo , where he worked for the next three years. In Tokyo he co-founded the German Society for Natural History and Ethnology of East Asia , in whose magazine he published several papers on Japanese fauna from 1873 to 1876. In December 1876 Hilgendorf returned from Japan and became Peters' assistant at the Berlin Museum of Natural History in the worms and crabs department . In 1880 he was hired as curator and in the same year married Julia Anthing, with whom he raised three children. His wife died early in 1899. In 1883 he took over the fish department , which he was responsible for exclusively as a curator from 1896 until the end of his life .

Hilgendorf suffered from a stomach ailment that made him unable to work from the summer of 1903 and to which he succumbed on July 5, 1904.

annotation

  1. The conclusions from the work were controversial. In 1920 Wilhelm Lubosch (anatomist in Würzburg) came to completely different conclusions from the same material (" ascendency - instead of descending theory "): The problem of animal genealogy. In addition to a discussion of the genealogical connection of the Steinheimer Schnecken .- Arch. Mikrosk. Anat 94: 459-499.

Works (via Planorbis multiformis )

  • Planorbis multiformis in the Steinheim freshwater limestone. An example of shape change over time. Monthly reports of the Royal Academy of Sciences Berlin, 1866.
  • Letter to E. von Martens. Journal of the German Geological Society 27, 1875
  • Planorbis multiformis again. Journal of the German Geological Society 29, 1877
  • New research in Steinheim. Journal of the German Geological Society 29, 1877.
  • New research on Planorbis multifornis. Tageblatt of the Natural Research Assembly Munich, 1877
  • On the issue of the Planorbis multiformis. Meeting reports of the Society of Friends of Nature Research in Berlin, 1877.
  • On the issue of the Planorbis multiformis. Cosmos 1879
  • Review of the newly published work: The genesis of the tertiary species of Planorbis at Steinheim by A. Hyatt. Meeting reports of the Society of Friends of Nature Research in Berlin, 1881.
  • The transition from the Planorbis multiformis trochiformis to the Planorbis multiformis oxystomus. Archive for Natural History 67th Supplement (Festschrift for Eduard von Martens) Berlin, 1901

literature

  • Johannes Baier: The Steinheimer Schneckensand - a Miocene fossil deposit of world format. In: fossils. 29 (6), 2012, 368-371, 2012.
  • Wilhelm Weltner : Franz Hilgendorf. December 5, 1839 - July 5, 1904. An obituary. In: Archives for Natural History. Volume 72, 1906, No. 1, pp. I-XII.
  • H. Janz: Hilgendorf's planorbid tree - the first introduction of Darwin's Theory of Transmutation into palaeontology. In: Paleontological Research. Volume 3, 1999, No. 4, pp. 287-293.
  • Johannes Baier and Armin Scherzinger: The new geological educational trail in the Steinheim impact crater. In: Annual reports and communications of the Upper Rhine Geological Association NF Volume 92, 2010, pp. 9–24.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Weltner (1906), p. III