Richard Harlan

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Richard Harlan (born September 19, 1796 in Philadelphia , † September 30, 1843 in New Orleans ) was an American doctor, zoologist and paleontologist .

Richard Harlan

Live and act

Harlan came from a wealthy Quaker family and was one of ten children. His younger brother was Josiah Harlan . Harlan studied medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia with the degree (MD) in 1818 and was still a year as a student (1816/17) ship's doctor on a ship of the East India Company on a voyage to Calcutta. In 1821 he became an anatomy instructor at the Joseph Parrish School and the Philadelphia Museum. In 1833 he visited England, France and Italy, lecturing on fossil reptiles at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Cambridge. In 1839 he moved to New Orleans, where he died of a stroke.

He published an overview of the fauna of North America and of the reptiles of North America. Harlan first described Basilosaurus in 1834 , which he believed to be a relative of the plesiosaurs, later he turned out to be a relative of the whales. He discovered and described the first paramylodon and first described the girdle and the Turks-and-Caicos iguana .

Harlan put together a large collection (in the end 275) of human skulls.

Memberships

In 1839 Harlan was introduced by the physician John Roberton as member number 157 of the Société cuviérienne . He was a member of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the American Philosophical Society . In December 1838 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

Fonts

  • Fauna americana: being a description of the mammiferous animals inhabiting North America, Philadelphia 1825.
  • American Herpetology, Philadelphia 1827

literature

  • Société Cuvierienne: Nouveaux membres admis dans la Société curvienne . In: Revue Zoologique par La Société Cuvierienne . tape 2 , 1839, p. 128 ( biodiversitylibrary.org ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Société cuviérienne, p. 128.
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Richard Harlan. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 2, 2015 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Harlan, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American zoologist, physician, and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 19, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Philadelphia
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1843
Place of death New Orleans