Victor Van Straelen
Victor Émile Van Straelen (born June 14, 1889 in Antwerp , † February 29, 1964 in Brussels ) was a Belgian zoologist, paleontologist and conservationist. From 1925 until his retirement in 1954 he was director of the Museum of Natural Sciences (Koninklijk Museum voor Natuurwetenschappen) in Brussels.
Life
Van Straelen went to the Atheneum in Antwerp and studied natural sciences at the Free University of Brussels. In 1914 he received his doctorate in chemistry with a dissertation on glauconite . During the German invasion he volunteered in the army and served as a geologist with the pioneers. In 1919 he received his doctorate in geology and palaeontology (Contributions à l'étude des crustacés décapodes de la période jurassique). In 1922 he became a curator at the geological collection of the Free University of Brussels and in 1925 he completed his habilitation. In the same year he became director of the Natural History Museum in Brussels. He also taught palaeontology as a professor at the Free University of Brussels from 1930 to 1934. He used construction projects in Belgium such as the construction of the tunnels under the Scheldt to collect fossils and for geological exploration and founded the Association pour l'Etude de la Paléontologie et de la Stratigraphie houillère to study the stratigraphy and paleontology of coal deposits in Belgium.
He conducted research in palaeontology and zoology, especially on crustaceans. He was also an important conservationist. In 1927/28 he accompanied Crown Prince Leopold (who later became King Leopold III) to Indonesia and collected fossils. He reports about the trip in his book De reis door de Indische Archipel door Prins Leopold van België . In 1929 he became a member of the administration of the Virunga National Park (then Parc National Albert) and took over its management in 1934 (and traveled to the Congo with Albert I in 1931) and in the same year the entire national park in the Belgian Congo. The park is best known as a reserve for mountain gorillas. In 1948 he was on the founding committee of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In addition to the Congo, he was also involved in establishing other national parks in Africa, where he conducted research.
He wrote the volumes on Eumalacostraca and Phyllocarida in the Fossilium catalogum.
From 1959 to 1964 he was President of the Charles Darwin Foundation, which was founded in 1959 in the Galapagos Islands. In 1958 he received the Darwin Wallace Medal from the Linnean Society of London . In 1930 he became a corresponding and in 1937 full member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences and in 1950 its president.
literature
- Edward Hindle , Obituary in Nature, Volume 202, 1964, pp. 1058-1059
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Van Straelen, Victor |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Van Straelen, Victor Émile |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Belgian zoologist and paleontologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 14, 1889 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Antwerp |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 29, 1964 |
| Place of death | Brussels |