Fritz Römer (zoologist)

Fritz Römer

Hermann Joseph Fritz Römer (born April 10, 1866 in Moers , †  March 20, 1909 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German zoologist .

Life

Fritz Römer attended high school in Herford , which he successfully completed in 1888. He then did his military service as a one-year volunteer and began studying natural sciences with a focus on zoology at the University of Jena in 1889 . After receiving his doctorate on the construction and development of the armadillo armor , he became Ernst Haeckel's assistant on October 1, 1892 at the Zoological Institute of the University of Jena. Haeckel later described him as the "best, most capable and most conscientious of all assistants" he had ever had. In Jena, Römer was primarily concerned with the skin and hair formation of vertebrates .

On April 21, 1898, he moved to the Zoological Museum in Berlin as an assistant , where he was in charge of the crustacean collection. In the summer of 1898, Römer and Fritz Schaudinn undertook a scientific expedition to the Northern Arctic Ocean on the fish steamer Helgoland, which was chartered for this purpose . The Helgoland expedition was initially planned as a hunting trip by its leader, Theodor Lerner , but the participation of the two zoologists gave it a scientific character. Succeeded in Spitsbergen to circle and Kong Karls Land to reach. The rich zoological yield gave rise to the publication of Fauna Arctica , a comprehensive representation of the entire arctic animal world in six volumes. Römer himself treated the state jellyfish (volume 2) and the rib jellyfish (volume 3).

1899 brought Willy Kükenthal the capable curator at the Zoological Institute of the University of Wroclaw , where the extensive collections of the Zoological Museum required a reorganization, but already on November 1, 1900 Romans joined a newly created position as curator of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main on . For the Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft , which was planning the new building of the museum, he undertook the complete reorganization of its collections. When the new Senckenberg Museum opened in 1907, he became its scientific director.

Römer was married and had a daughter.

Fonts (selection)

• Fritz Römer: About the construction and development of the armadillo armor . Inaugural dissertation, Jena 1893
• Fritz Römer and Fritz Schaudinn (eds.): Fauna Arctica. A compilation of the Arctic animal forms with special consideration of the Svalbard area based on the results of the German expedition to the northern Arctic Ocean in 1898 . 6 volumes, Gustav Fischer, Jena 1900–1933
• Fritz Römer: The siphonophores . ibid, Volume 2, 1901, pp. 169-184
• Fritz Römer: The ctenophores . ibid, Volume 3, 1903, pp. 65-90

literature

• E. Marx: Fritz Römer, his life and his work . In: Report of the Senckenbergische Naturforschenden Gesellschaft 40, 1909, pp. 9–29