Max Fürbringer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Max Fürbringer, 1905

Max Carl Anton Fürbringer (born January 30, 1846 in Wittenberg , † March 6, 1920 in Heidelberg ) was a German anatomist and ornithologist .

Life

Attempt of a family tree of birds. From: Investigations into the morphology and systematics of birds , 1888

Max Carl Anton Fürbringer was born on January 30, 1846 in Wittenberg as the son of the former district court director Karl and Hermine Fürbringer (née Gumprecht) . He was the brother of the physician Paul Fürbringer (1849–1930). In Jena Fürbringer took a degree in natural sciences, which he continued in Berlin, and received his doctorate there in 1869 with a zoological work. He was encouraged to study medicine through an assistant position at Carl Gegenbaur in Jena . He followed him in 1873 when he accepted a call to Heidelberg , completed his habilitation in anatomy in 1877 and was appointed associate professor in 1879.

Also in 1879 he was appointed full professor in Amsterdam , in 1888 he was appointed professor of anatomy at the University of Jena and in 1901 became director of the anatomical institute at Heidelberg University . In 1912 he retired and died on March 6, 1920 in Heidelberg . In 1881 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina and in 1900 a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . Since 1903 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian and since 1909 a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Under the influence of Carl Gegenbaur , Fürbringer dealt with developmental work (formation of the kidneys ). As he grew went to his task, he was most thoroughly equipped with all skills that support the assessment of previous attempts at classification of birds were necessary. He was a comparative anatomist who had sharpened his judgment with rich experience and carried out a lot of painstaking detailed work, especially those that seemed necessary to clarify genealogical questions.

Nobody before him, and one should probably not say after him, has compiled the characteristics that can be used for classification so completely and weighed their phylogenetic value as carefully as he, who was always aware of the connections between form and function. He has therefore cautiously avoided the pitfalls of secondary morphological correspondences that arise from the same functional influence and which the systematist confronts. He was also familiar with what is now known as " allometric growth ".

His monumental major work "Investigations into the morphology and systematics of birds" is based on thorough comparative studies of the chest, shoulder and wing regions of the entire class of birds and, taking into account paleontological and animal geographic facts, led to new insights into the tribal history of birds and the establishment of a Basic features of the bird system that is still valid today . Among other things, Fürbringer was able to prove that the "flat-breasted birds" ( ratites , e.g. ostriches ) in a heterogeneous complex are secondary to flightlessness.

Due to the introduction of four higher categories (Ordo, Subordo, Gens, Familia), his system is more finely structured than that of its predecessors, whereby the category of “gentes” corresponds to the orders of other authors. His groups of gentes to 24 subordinate orders and these to 7 orders are of an increasingly hypothetical character. Of Fürbringer's numerous other works, only his monograph on the spino-occipital nerves should be emphasized here. Fürbringer is considered to be the main representative of the Gegenbaur school , to which he devoted a detailed biography (1903).

To improve teaching methods, Fürbringer instructed some employees at the Heidelberg Institute to draw existing objects, specimens and models on small cardboard. The cardboard was 18 × 24 cm in size. The employees used either ink, watercolors or colored pencils to create these small-format teaching boards. Sometimes photographic images of the lenses were also attached to the cardboard.

Works

  • The bones and muscles of the extremities in the snake-like dinosaurs. 1870.
  • Investigations into the morphology and systematics of birds. (2 volumes) 1888.
  • On the development of the amphibian kidney. 1877.
  • Via the occipital nerves d. Selachians and Holocephalas and their comparative morphology. in the Festschrift for Carl Gegenbaur III, 1897, pp. 351–768.
  • On the systematics and genealogy of reptiles. Contribution 1900.
  • On the question of the ancestry of mammals. 1904.
  • The spino-occipital nerves.
  • For the comparative anatomy of the shoulder muscles and the thoracic shoulder apparatus. (five volumes)
  • Morphological issues.

literature

Web links

Commons : Max Fürbringer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ LK Nyhart: The importance of the "Gegenbaur school" for German morphology . In: Theory in Biosciences . tape 122 , 2003, p. 162-173 , doi : 10.1007 / s12064-003-0051-x .
  2. ↑ Member entry of Max Fürbringer at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on October 30, 2017.
  3. ↑ Sara Doll: Max Fürbringer - Kleinformatige Lehrtafeln , in: Sara Doll, Joachim Kirsch and Wolfgang U. Eckart (Eds.): When death serves life - The human being as teaching aid , Springer Germany 2017, pp. 49–51. doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-662-52674-3
personal data
SURNAME Carer, Max
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fürbringer, Max Carl Anton; Advocate, Max Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anatomist and ornithologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH Wittenberg
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1920
Place of death Heidelberg