Karl Alfred von Zittel

Karl Alfred von Zittel

Karl Alfred von Zittel (born September 25, 1839 in Bahlingen , † January 5, 1904 in Munich ) was a German geologist and paleontologist .

Life

The son of the Protestant pastor Karl Zittel studied geology and medicine at the University of Heidelberg under Heinrich Georg Bronn, among others . During his studies in 1857 he became a member of the Frankonia Heidelberg fraternity . Zittel received his doctorate from Heidelberg University in 1860. In the same year he went on a research trip to Scandinavia and studied from 1861 in Paris, where he mainly dealt with the research results of Georges Cuvier and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck . In 1862 Zittel went to the Geological Reichsanstalt Vienna, where he took part in the geological mapping of Dalmatia and became an assistant at the Court Minerals Cabinet in Vienna. In 1863 he completed his habilitation in geology and palaeontology in Vienna, and in the same year he became a private lecturer at the University of Vienna .

In 1863 he became professor for mineralogy and geognosy at the Polytechnic Karlsruhe, the predecessor institution of the University of Karlsruhe . In 1866 he took over what was then the only chair of palaeontology in Germany at the University of Munich as successor to Albert Oppel . With his work in Munich, Zittel made a decisive contribution to the development of paleontology as an independent university discipline.

From 1873 to 1874 he accompanied Gerhard Rohlfs' expedition to the Libyan desert , the scientific results of which he published in his work on the geological structure of the Libyan desert (1880) and in the journal Palaeontographica (1883).

In 1880 he also became a full professor of geology at the University of Munich and director of the “Palaeontological Museum” in the Bavarian capital.

From 1869 until his death he published the journal Palaeontographica , which was founded in 1846 by Wilhelm Dunker and Hermann von Meyer .

Honors and honors (selection)

Title page of the first German-language complete presentation on the history of geology (1899)

• 1869 extraordinary and 1875 full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
• 1882 Commander's Cross of the Order of the Italian Crown
• 1885 Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Bavarian Crown , combined with the conferment of personal nobility as a Knight of Zittel
• 1886–1888 - in the Central Committee Munich - 1st President of the DuOeAV ( German and Austrian Alpine Association )
• 1889 Name of the Zittelhaus, built in 1886 as a log cabin on the summit of the Rauriser Sonnblick, after him, the origin of the Sonnblick observatory
• 1891 Commander's Cross of the Greek Order of the Redeemer
• 1894 Privy Council
• 1894 Order of Michael II class
• 1894 Bavarian Maximilian Order for Science and Art
• 1894 Awarded the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London
• 1896 Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg
• 1898 Vice-President of the Société géologique de France
• 1898 member of the National Academy of Sciences
• 1899–1904 President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
• 1900 Corresponding member of the Académie des sciences
• 1903 member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

The Palaeontological Society has been awarding the Zittel Medal since 1984, which honors outstanding collectors and palaeontologists who have made particular efforts to ensure successful collaboration with specialist scientists.

From 1886 to 1888/89 he was president of the German and Austrian Alpine Club and took care of the construction of a hut with a meteorological station on the Goldberg Group , later called the Zittel-Haus. The Zittel cliffs in the East Antarctic Coatsland have been named after him since 1972 .

According to Zittel, the genera of fossil plants are Zittelia Felix and Zittelina Mun.-Chalm. named ex L.Morellet & J.Morellet .

Testimony about Zittel

Richard Goldschmidt wrote in Experiences and Encounters (1959) about Zittel, whom he met during his studies in Munich (around 1900):

“Zittel was a serious and dignified looking man with a short black beard ... We all sat around a long table with the professor in the middle. To each of these lectures he brought hundreds of fossils that he took from the wonderful Bavarian State Collection ... The lecture was terribly boring because he used to bring up a multitude of names of species unknown to us. "

Fonts

• About scientific truth. Munich: Verl. D. KB Akad., 1902
• Aims and tasks of the academies in the twentieth century. Munich: Verl. Dkb Akad., 1900
• Review of the founding and development of the K. Bavarian Academy of Sciences in the 19th century. Munich: Verl. Dkb Akad., 1899
• History of geology and paleontology until the end of the 19th century. Munich [u. a.]: Oldenbourg, 1899, online
• Basics of Palaeontology (Palaeozoology) Munich [u. a.]: Oldenbourg, 1895
  • the English edition appeared as the Textbook of Paleontology by Macmillan in 1900, 1902 and 1925 and in three volumes, edited by Charles R. Eastman and edited by US scientists such as EC Case . It was a standard work in the USA.
• The wonderland at Yellowstone. Berlin: Habel, 1885.
• Contributions to the geology and paleontology of the Libyan desert and the adjacent areas of Egypt. Kassel: Fischer, 1883 - (Paläontographica)
• About the geological structure of the Libyan desert. Munich: Verl. D. K. Akad., 1880
• Geological observations from d. Central Apennines. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1879. (Geological-palaeontological contributions; Vol 2.2)
• Manual of Palaeontology. Under co. Wilhelm Philipp Schimper 1876 -
• The chalk. Berlin: Habel, 1876. (Collection of generally understandable scientific lectures; 251 = Ser. 11)
• About coeloptychium. Munich: Verlag of the k. Akad., 1876
• Letters from the Libyan desert. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1875
• The gastropods of the Stramberger strata. Cassel: Fischer, 1873: Paläontographica; Suppl. [2], 3)
• From primeval times. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1871 -
• The fauna of the older cephalopod-bearing tithon formations. Cassel: Fischer, 1870 (Paläontographica; Suppl. [2,1 / 2])

literature

• Josef Felix Pompeckj : Karl Alfred von Zittel: an obituary . Swiss beard, Stuttgart 1904.
• Helmut Mayr: Karl Alfred von Zittel on his 150th birthday . In: Communications from the Bavarian State Collection for Paleontology and Historical Geology . H. 29 (December 1989), pp. 7-51. ( Digitized version )

Web links

Commons : Karl Alfred von Zittel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Karl Alfred von Zittel  - Sources and full texts

• Literature by and about Karl Alfred von Zittel in the catalog of the German National Library
• Karl Alfred von Zittel in the German biography
• Frankonia Heidelberg - "Famous Franks"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fraternity leaves . XIV., Berlin 1900, p. 282.
2. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Karl Alfred Ritter von Zittel (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on February 6, 2016.
3. ↑ Johannes Emmer: ALO docView - Journal of the German and Austrian Alpine Club Vol. 25 (1894). History of the German and Austrian Alpine Club. P. 363 , accessed May 28, 2017 . 
4. ↑ https://www.alpenverein.at/rauris.../alpenverein_rauris-die_chronik_2012-03-27.pdf
5. ↑ Hans Körner: The Bavarian Maximiliansorden for science and art . Munich 2001, p. 88.
6. ^ List of former members since 1666: Letter Z. Académie des sciences, accessed on March 17, 2020 (French). 
7. ^ Anneliese Gidl: Alpine Association. The townspeople discover the Alps . Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2007, ISBN 978-3-205-77668-0 .
8. ↑ Zittel House
9. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Max von Pettenkofer	President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences from 1899 to 1904	Karl Theodor Ritter von Heigel