Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz

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Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz

Johann Friedrich Gustav von Eschscholtz , Russian Иоганн Фридрих фон Эшшольц , (born November 1 . Jul / 12. November  1793 greg. In Tartu , † May 7. . Jul / 19th May  1831 . Greg ) was a Baltic German naturalist , entomologist and explorer . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Eschsch. “In zoology“ Eschscholtz ”is used.

Live and act

His parents were the civil servant Johann Gottfried Eschholtz and his wife Katharina Hedwig Ziegler .

Eschscholtz studied medicine at the University of Dorpat and took part as a ship's doctor from 1815 to 1818 under Otto von Kotzebue on a trip around the world (see Rurik expedition ). Together with Adelbert von Chamisso , Eschscholtz collected numerous natural objects during this trip and made many scientific observations. He provided a series of works for the third volume of Kotzebue's voyage of discovery to the South Seas and Bering Straits (Weimar 1821).

After his return, Eschscholtz was appointed associate professor in Dorpat in 1819 . In 1823 he accompanied O. von Kotzebue again on his trip around the world as senior physician. This time, too, Kotzebue immortalized the name Eschscholtz in the Eschscholtz Islands, which were referred to as Bikini Atoll from 1946 onwards. After his return, Eschscholtz bequeathed his extensive collections to the University of Dorpat and published an overview of the zoological yield , which comprised 2,400 animal species, in the second volume of Kotzebue's New Journey Around the World (Weimar 1830).

He specifically collected insects (especially in Alaska, California and the Pacific) and was a specialist in jewel beetles (Buprestidae) and click beetles (Elateridae). He was in contact with other entomologists who described many of his finds, such as the beetle specialist Pierre François Marie Auguste Dejean and Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim .

Johann Friedrich Eschscholtz died on May 7th July. / May 19, 1831 greg. in Dorpat.

He married in Dorpat in 1819 Christine Friederike Ledebour from Greifswald, a sister of the botanist Carl Friedrich von Ledebour (1786-1851). The couple had two sons.

Honors and memberships

In 1821 Eschscholtz was elected a member of the Leopoldina . From 1829 he was a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . In honor of Eschscholtz, Kotzebue named a bay in the Kotzebue Sound of Northwest America Eschscholtz Bay and Chamisso named a new plant genus Eschscholzia (often incorrectly referred to as Eschscholtzia ) belonging to the Papaveraceae family .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Andreas W. Daum: German Naturalists in the Pacific around 1800. Entanglement, Autonomy, and a Transnational Culture of Expertise . In: Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, Ulrike Strasser (ed.): Exploration and entanglements: Germans in Pacific Worlds from the Early Modern Period to World War I . Berghahn, New York 2019, p. 87-89, 93, 95 .
personal data
SURNAME Eschscholtz, Johann Friedrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eschscholtz, Johann Friedrich Gustav von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German naturalist and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH November 12, 1793
PLACE OF BIRTH Dorpat
DATE OF DEATH May 19, 1831
Place of death Dorpat