Salomon Muller

Salomon Müller (born April 7, 1804 in Heidelberg , † December 29, 1863 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German naturalist and zoologist .

Origin and education

Salomon Müller was born the son of a Heidelberg saddler and innkeeper. One of his brothers later ran the saddlery and the inn at the Riesenstein (in front of the shooting gate, today shooting gate, western suburb), in which he also served from time to time. He attended elementary school and took private Latin lessons. In 1823 he attended the lectures in zoology at Heidelberg University, but he was not matriculated. In his spare time he worked as a bird hunter and taxidermist.

Expedition to East India

Certified commissie

He met the budding naturalists Heinrich Boie and Heinrich Christian Macklot during their stay in their parents' inn. Allegedly, the young host overheard the conversations between the two of them about the results of a research trip with such interest that he caught their attention. After they recognized his talent in shooting and stuffing birds, they were able to convince Coenraad Jacob Temminck to win the young miller as a taxidermist for the Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlandsch Indië (Natural History Commission for the Dutch East Indies). He soon became close friends with Boie and Macklot.

Java

In December 1825 he was sent on a scientific trip to Java as a collector and stuffer together with Boie and Macklot and the Dutch draftsman Pieter van Oort on behalf of Temminck . After the early deaths of their predecessors Heinrich Kuhl (d. 1821) and Johan Coenraad van Hasselt (d. 1823), scientific samples from the Dutch possessions in East India were to be collected for the Natural History Museum in Leiden. Arrived in Java on June 6, 1826 , they explored the island's flora and fauna until 1828 and in 1831. In the second year of their collecting activities, the small group lost its leader Heinrich Boie , who died on September 4, 1827 of a biliary fever.

New Guinea and Timor

The other expeditions took Müller accompanied by Macklot, van Oort and taxidermist Gerrit van Raalten (1797–1829), the last survivor of Heinrich Kuhl's first group of researchers , and the botanist Alexander Zippelius to numerous Indonesian islands. From 1828 to 1829 he traveled on board the Corvette Triton to the Moluccas, to the southwest coast of New Guinea and to Timor . The almost one-year stay in Timor claimed two more lives for his travel companions: Zippelius died in 1828, van Raalten in 1829.

Sumatra

From 1833 to 1835 he researched the west coast and parts of the interior of Sumatra with van Oort and the botanist Pieter Willem Korthals . After Macklot was stabbed to death with a lance during an uprising of Chinese workers in Java in 1832, the two-year ventures in Sumatra sprang from his plans and were entirely his merit. Finally, van Oort, the last member of his team in Sumatra, died of malaria in 1834.

Collection results

After his return to Europe in 1837, he brought a huge number of zoological exhibits with him. His ornithological yield for the Leiden museum alone amounted to 6,500 bird skins , 700 skeletons , 150 nests and 400 eggs . Furthermore, his collection contained numerous mammals , fish , reptiles and amphibians , many plants and minerals .

Merits

Due to the early death of the scientific management of the Natural History Commission, Müller quickly grew beyond his actual area of ​​responsibility and qualified as a generally recognized zoologist with extensive knowledge of the Indonesian island world. He was in charge of the Natural History Commission from 1835 until his departure. After 11 years in the tropics, to whose murderous climate all his companions had fallen victim to, he returned to Europe as one of the few survivors in the Commission's almost 30-year history. Appointed a Dutch citizen and employed by the Leiden Museum, he did his best to scientifically record the accumulated collections of the Indian archipelago. When the Natural History Commission was dissolved in 1850, he relocated to Freiburg im Breisgau . Here he spent the last years of his life in seclusion until he died on December 29, 1863.

In December 1837 the Philosophical Faculty in Heidelberg gave him a doctorate in absentia on the basis of his zoological achievements, but also his services in the field of mineralogy and physics in view of his work, remarks on the natural composition of part of the west coast and inland of Sumatra, with observations and descriptions of various animals found there and on other Sunda Islands .

Numerous genus or species descriptions go back to Salomon Müller, such as the genus of the scoop dog Otocyon Müller, 1836 or the tree kangaroo Dendrolagus Müller, 1840 or the Sunda gavial Tomistoma schlegelii Müller, 1838.

Works

• Salomon Müller: Bijdragen tot de kennis van Sumatra: bijzonder in geschiedkundig en ethnographically opzigt . Eds. S. & J. Luchtmans, Leiden, 1846.

• Salomon Müller: Reizen en onderzoekingen in Sumatra: gedaan op last der Nederlandsche Indian regering, tusschen de jaren 1833 en 1838, door Dr. S. Müller and Dr. L. Horner . Edited by K. Fuhri, Gravenhage, 1855.

• Salomon Müller: Reizen en Onderzoekingen in Den Indischen Archipel: Gedaan Op Last der Nederlandsche Indische Regering, Tusschen de Jaren 1828 en 1836 Ed. Frederik Muller, Amsterdam, 2 volumes, 1857.

• Salomon Müller & Hermann Schlegel: Over de crocodiles from the Indian archipelago . - In: Coenraad Jacob Temminck: Verhandelingen over de Natuurlijke Geschiedenis der Nederlandsche Overzeesche Bezittingen door de leden the Natuurkundige Commissie in India and other schrijvers . Eds. S. & J. Leuchtmans & CC van de Hoeck, Leiden, 1839-1844.

literature

• Cornelis Andries Backer: Clarifying woordenboek van wetenschappelijke plant names: de namen van de in Nederland en Nederlands-Indië in het wild groeiende en in tuinen en parken gekweekte varens en hogere planten . Ed. LJ Veen, Amsterdam, 704 pp.

• Huibert Johannes Veth: Overzicht van hetgeen, in het bijzonder door Nederland, gedaan is voor de kennis der fauna van Nederlandsch-Indië . Academisch Proefschrift, Leiden, 1879: 204 pp.

• Encyclopaedie van Nederlandsch-Indie . 1918, Part 2, HM, Gravenhage.

proof

1. ^ Carl Caesar von Leonhard: Tourist book for Heidelberg and the surrounding area . Edited by Groos, Heidelberg, 1834.
2. ↑ Leonhard Wiedtemann: correspondence. Heidelberg, August 1837 . In: Didaskalia: Leaves for Spirit, Mind and Publicity . Ed. JL Keller, Frankfurt / Main, Volume 15, No. 240, 1837.
3. ↑ Michael Walters: A Concise History of Ornithology. The lives and works of its founding figures . New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2003, 255 pp.
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Ludwig Gebhardt: Die Ornithologen Mitteleuropas . Brühlscher Verlag, Gießen, 1964, 404 pp.
5. ^ Marius Jacob Sirks: Indian Natuuronderzoek . Academisch Proefschrift Ellerman, Harms & Co., Amsterdam, 1915, 303 pp.