Tanaka Shigeho

Tanaka Shigeho ( Japanese 田中 茂 穂 ; born August 16, 1878 in Kōchi , Kōchi Prefecture , Japan ; † December 24, 1974 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese ichthyologist . He was considered one of the "fathers of Japanese ichthyology".

Life

Academic career

In 1901 Tanaka entered the University of Tokyo , where he graduated in zoology with a major in ichthyology in 1903. In 1931 he received his doctorate with the dissertation On the distribution of fishes in Japanese waters to the Doctor of Science (DSc) at the University of Tokyo. In 1938 he was appointed professor. In 1940 he retired.

Research work

After completing his studies, Tanaka was the editor of the monthly journal Zoological Magazine , in which his first important article Gyorui Gaisetsu ( Guidance for Ichthyology ) appeared in 1904 . In the same year Tanaka started building the ichthyological collection of the University of Tokyo. Tanaka collected both on his own and together with his students and employees. His collection, including numerous type specimens, which is housed in the Zoological Museum of the University of Tokyo, comprises over 300,000 samples. In 1905 Tanaka published his first scientific description of the sea ​​cat species Chimaera owstoni and Chimaera jordani . Between 1908 and 1930 he described nearly 200 new fish species from Japanese waters.

In 1910 Tanaka resigned from the editorial office of Zoological Magazine . In 1913 he founded the new Gyoguku-zasshi (Ichthyological Journal), which was discontinued after only seven issues in the same year. In 1911 Tanaka began the series Figures and Descriptions of the Fishes of Japan , of which he published 48 volumes by 1930. This series was published in Japanese and English. After a long hiatus , Itiro Tomiyama and Tokiharu Abe , two students of Tanaka, published the 49th volume in 1953. In 1958, the series was completed with the 59th volume. The series comprises a total of 337 species descriptions, including 50 initial descriptions .

In 1913 Tanaka published his most popular work, A catalog of the fishes of Japan , together with David Starr Jordan and John Otterbein Snyder , which contains the descriptions and illustrations of all Japanese fish species known to date as well as their synonyms, areas of distribution and Japanese common names . In 1926, Tanaka had a research stay at Stanford University at the invitation of Jordan .

literature

• Carl Leavitt Hubbs : Obituary Shigeho Tanaka (1878–1974) . In: Copeia , Vol. 1975, No. 4 (Dec. 31, 1975), p. 792
• Keiichi Matsuura: Fish Collection Building in Japan, With Comments on Major Japanese Ichthyologists In: Theodore W. Pietsch, William D. Anderson (Eds.): Collection building in ichthyology and herpetology , Special publication, number 3, American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists , ISBN 0-935868-91-7 , pp. 171-182.

Individual evidence

1. ^ On the distribution of fishes in Japanese waters . 1931 ( nii.ac.jp [accessed September 13, 2017]).
2. ^ S. Tanaka: On two new species of Chimaera. Journal of the College of Science, Imperial University, 20 (11), 1905: 1-14, Pls. 12.

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Tanaka is the family name, Shigeho the first name.