Gustav Theodor Fritsch

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Gustav Theodor Fritsch
Research trip to Isfahan to observe the passage of Venus in 1874. From left to right: Franz Stolze , Ernst Becker , Gustav Fritsch, Ernst Hoeltzer and Hugo Buchwald

Gustav Theodor Fritsch (born March 5, 1838 in Cottbus , †  June 12, 1927 in Berlin ) was a German anatomist , anthropologist and physiologist .

Life

Fritsch was a son of the building councilor Ludwig Fritsch and his wife Sophie Kramsta . From 1849 he attended the Maria-Magdalenen-Gymnasium in Breslau . After graduating from high school, he studied in Berlin , Breslau and Heidelberg between 1857 and 1862 , first natural sciences , later medicine . As a young man he spent three years in South Africa between 1863 and 1866 and later published several papers on the African ethnic groups and the electrical organs of the electric eel Gymnotus electricus . He emigrated from Cape Town to the western and eastern provinces, the Orange Free State , Natal and Bechuanaland .

In 1868 he accompanied the expedition to observe the solar eclipse of August 18, 1868 to Aden and from there went to Egypt , where he accompanied Johannes Dümichen on an archaeological-photographic expedition. In 1874 he went to Isfahan in Persia to observe the passage of Venus (see picture) and then to travel to Asia Minor for zoological purposes . From 1881 to 1882, Fritsch traveled to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean countries on behalf of the Royal Academy of Sciences to study electricity in fish.

In 1867 Fritsch became an assistant at the anatomical institute, and in 1874 he became an associate professor of physiology at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin . As an outstanding anthropologist, he was also recognized by Rudolf Virchow . He later became head of the histological department of the Physiological Institute. There his main interest was the research of the motor functions of the cerebrum and their localization. His work, which he wrote together with Eduard Hitzig in 1870 after experimental electrical stimulation of the frontal lobe of dogs, is considered the first descriptive localization theory of the motor cerebral cortex .

After the Franco-Prussian War , Fritsch married Helene (1851–1915), a daughter of the publisher Ferdinand Hirt, in Breslau . With her he had a daughter and a son.

Little is known that Fritsch, with his work The Retina Elements and the Three-Color Theory, is one of the pioneers of color photography. Gustav Theodor Fritsch died in Berlin at the age of 89.

In 1869, Fritsch was one of the founding members of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory . In 1887 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

Works

  • Three years in South Africa. Travel sketches compiled from notes in the diary. Shepherd, Breslau 1868
  • with Eduard Hitzig: About the electrical excitability of the cerebrum. In: Archives for Anatomy, Physiology and Scientific Medicine . 1870, pp. 300-332
  • The natives of South Africa: described ethnographically and anatomically. Shepherd, Breslau 1872
  • Comparative anatomical examination of the electrical organs of Gymnotus electricus. Veit, Leipzig 1881
  • The retinal elements and the three-color theory. Berlin 1904

literature

Web links

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personal data
SURNAME Fritsch, Gustav Theodor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anatomist, anthropologist and physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 5, 1838
PLACE OF BIRTH cottbus
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1927
Place of death Berlin