Richard von Hertwig

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Richard von Hertwig, 1930
Grave of Richard von Hertwig in the forest cemetery in Munich-Solln

Richard Wilhelm Karl Theodor Ritter von Hertwig (born September 23, 1850 in Friedberg / Hessen , † October 3, 1937 in Schlederloh in the Isar valley ) was a German physician and zoologist .

Life

Richard Hertwig first studied chemistry and then medicine at the University of Jena together with his older brother Oscar , with whom he had also completed school and high school in Mühlhausen / Thuringia . Under the influence of Ernst Haeckel , he shifted his interest more to zoology and biology . In 1872 he did his doctorate at the University of Bonn , where he worked as an assistant to Max Schultze at the Anatomical Institute, alternately with his brother Oscar Hertwig.

After Max Schultze's death , he completed his habilitation in 1875 in Jena under Ernst Haeckel in the field of zoology and became an associate professor there in 1878, until he was appointed full professor of zoology at the University of Königsberg in 1881 . In 1881 Hertwig was elected a member of the Leopoldina . As the successor to Franz Troschel , he moved to the University of Bonn in 1883 and became the first director of the Zoological Museum and Institute. However, in 1885 he accepted a call to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich , where he stayed until 1925 and worked as the head of the Zoological State Collection and director of the Zoological Institute, which he developed into a center of biological science.

From 1891 to 1931 he kept his textbook on zoology up to date over 15 editions. From 1885 as an extraordinary member and from 1889 as a full member, Hertwig belonged to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1901 he was chairman of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors . In 1905 he was elected a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . 1906/1907 he was President of the German Zoological Society . In 1909 he was accepted into the Bavarian nobility. From 1910 he was a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and an external member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Rome. In 1917 he was awarded the Helmholtz Medal . In the same year he was one of the founding members of the anti-Semitic German Fatherland Party . In 1929 Hertwig was elected to the National Academy of Sciences , in 1932 he became an honorary member of the Leopoldina. In 1933 he was with the Peace Class of the Order pour le Mérite awarded and after the " seizure " of the Nazis appointed in 1933 an honorary member of the German Society for Science inheritance.

His student Otto Koehler became one of the founders of ethology in Germany.

Research activity

At the beginning of his career he did a lot of work with his brother Oscar Hertwig . Together they developed the so-called Coelom theory in 1881 , an attempt to explain the middle cotyledon that brought important insights into embryology . She suspects that all organs and tissues develop differently from three basic tissue layers.

Hertwig worked systematically on several groups of invertebrates and created basic work on the construction of animals. In 1895 he established the subclass Heteroconchia (see classification of mussels ), which is still valid today, within the Bivalvia . His contributions to protozoa research are also known . He was also the first to use the sea ​​urchin egg to correctly explain the fertilization process for the first time as a fusion of egg and sperm nuclei.

Later he and his children Günther and Paula examined the effects of radium rays on animal germ cells.

Fonts

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Richard Hertwig  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Hertwig, Richard von. 2005, p. 580.
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Richard Wilhelm Karl Theodor von Hertwig. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 17, 2015 (Russian).
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 112.
  4. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 248.
personal data
SURNAME Hertwig, Richard von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hertwig, Richard Wilhelm Karl Theodor Ritter von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1850
PLACE OF BIRTH Friedberg
DATE OF DEATH October 3, 1937
Place of death Schlederloh