Victor Leopold Ritter von Zepharovich

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Victor Leopold Ritter von Zepharovich

Victor Leopold Ritter von Zepharovich (born April 13, 1830 in Vienna , † February 24, 1890 in Prague ) was Professor of Mineralogy at the University of Prague.

Born as the son of the court secretary Daniel von Zepharovich, he received his academic training at the Schottengymnasium and moved to the University of Vienna in 1848 to study law . His passion for the mineralogical sciences prompted von Zepharovich to change his profession. He studied mining science and mineralogy in Schemnitz and completed the workload required for the state examination in just two years.

In 1852 he joined the association of the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute founded and managed by Haidinger as a volunteer and, under Franz Fötterle and Franz Ritter von Hauer, participated in geological surveys in Bohemia, Hungary and the Venetian Alps. In 1857 he was appointed professor of mineralogy at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow and after its Polonization in 1861 transferred to Graz. He was a member of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors and was elected a member of the Leopoldina in 1858 .

In 1864 he followed a call to the University of Prague as the successor to August Emanuel von Reuss and developed a fruitful teaching activity there as a teacher of mineralogy and initially also of geology at the university, as well as temporarily at the German polytechnic .

Most of his first works refer to his geological recordings in Bohemia and Hungary and can be found for the most part in the yearbook of the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute. From 1856 onwards, von Zepharovich turned entirely to mineralogy and crystallography . He was an excellent expert on minerals and an excellent representative of the physical-crystallographic direction in mineralogy. His numerous larger and smaller treatises and comments on minerals, natural and artificial crystals are partly published in the writings of the Vienna Academy , to which he belonged as a corresponding member, partly in Groth’s Zeitschrift für Kristallographie . His crystallographic studies of the Idocras (1864) are considered a model for a fine investigation.

He discovered several new minerals, such as diaphorite , syngenite , barrandite (mixed crystal of the series strictite-variscite), variscite ( spherite ) and jaulingite (variety of amber ). His main work, a mineral topography of Austria, in which all observations about the Austro-Hungarian mineral discovery sites are compiled, remained unfinished. The first volume appeared in 1859, the second in 1873.

In 1887 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg .

Zepharovich lived in a happy but childless marriage with Melanie Pacher of Theinburg. He was generally valued and popular because of his reliable character and fine manners. Despite his Slavic name, he was one of the most determined representatives of Germanism in Prague. He died in Prague on February 24, 1890 after a long sick bed.

literature

Web links

Wikisource: Victor Leopold Ritter von Zepharovich  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Members of the Society of German Natural Scientists and Doctors 1857
  2. ↑ Member entry by Victor Leopold Ritter von Zepharovich at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on August 30, 2016.
  3. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Victor Leopold von Zepharovich. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed February 26, 2016 (Russian).
personal data
SURNAME Zepharovich, Victor Leopold Ritter von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian university professor, professor of mineralogy
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 24, 1890
Place of death Prague