Wilhelm Harder (zoologist)

Wilhelm Harder (born January 29, 1921 in Krefeld , † February 27, 2009 in Tübingen ) was a German zoologist. His research focus was electric fish .

Life

After graduating from high school in Itzehoe , Harder was committed to the Reich Labor Service from April 1939 . He was then called up for military service. During a leave of absence he studied biology at Kiel University for one semester in the winter of 1942/43 . He continued his studies after his return from captivity from the winter semester 1945/46. His subjects were zoology, botany, geology, paleontology, chemistry and geography. In 1950 he was with the thesis of various comparative studies on bowel House mammalian breeds and their wild relatives for Dr. rer. nat. PhD. He then worked for several months as a volunteer assistant at the Institute for Pet Science in Kiel and then worked for three years as a scientific assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Biology , Department of Fisheries Biology , in Wilhelmshaven .

From 1953 to 1960 he worked at the Institute for Fishery Biology at the University of Hamburg . From September 1954 to August 1955 he was a fellow at the Scripps Institution of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in La Jolla , California . In 1959, at the invitation of the National Science Foundation , he went on a two-month lecture tour of the United States. In 1961 he became a research associate at the Institute for Vibration Research in Tübingen ( Fraunhofer Society Munich). In 1964 his two-volume work "Anatomie der Fisch" appeared, which was published in 1975 in an English translation. In professional circles, this book is one of the standard works on fish anatomy.

In 1965 Harder switched to the zoological institute of the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen as a scientific employee . This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship from the German Research Foundation , then work as an academic councilor at the chair for animal physiology and, in 1970, the appointment to the academic senior councilor. In 1981 he was appointed Academic Director .

In 1968 Harder became an associate professor in the subject of zoology at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Tübingen. He was not promoted to full professor due to the reorientation of the university structures due to “structural considerations”. 1986 Harder retired from active service.

Harder's main research areas were planktology , the anatomy of fish and the structure and function of electrical organs in fish. For 40 years, Harder has dealt with weakly electric fish, especially the Egyptian pike (Mormyridae) from Africa, which "scan" their largely cloudy surroundings with the help of electric fields. Harder pioneered the systematics of the Nile pike. To do this, he conducted research at the major natural history museums in Tervuren, Paris and London.

In 1975 Harder received an invitation from the scientists Armin Heymer and André Brosset to the research station of the Center national de la recherche scientifique near Makokou , Gabon . As a member of an international research group, he carried out behavioral studies on Nile pike in the field for four months. In 1978 there was another three-month stay at the research station, which is located in the middle of a rainforest.

In 2000 Harder published the CD-Rom "Mormyridae and other Osteoglossomorpha" on behalf of UNESCO .

Fonts (selection)

• Anatomy of the Fishes , Volume 1, 1964 (English translation: Anatomy of the Fishes , 1975)
• Anatomy of the fish , Volume 2 Handbook of Inland Fisheries Central Europe , 1964
• Head region and shoulder girdle of fish: a tabular compilation of the bones and other important components of the fish skull with references to the remaining vertebrates , 1965
• The relationship between electroreceptors, electrical organ, lateral line organs and nervous system in the Mormyridae (Teleostei, Pisces) , Zeitschrift für Comparative Physiologie 59, 1968, pp. 272-318

literature

• Raimund Apfelbach Obituary for Wilhelm Harder January 29, 1921 - February 27, 2009. German Zoological Society, 2010