Wilhelm Ludwig (biologist)

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Wilhelm Ludwig (born October 20, 1901 in Asch , Bohemia ; † January 23, 1959 in Leipzig ) was a German zoologist and geneticist .

The focus of his research activities were genetics ( population genetics ), inbreeding, cousin marriages, paternity diagnoses, evolution theory , biometrics , sensory physiology (the “optimal horopter ”), gender distribution in humans and animals and the right-left problem .

life and work

Wilhelm Ludwig was born the son of Wolfgang Ludwig (1855-1919) and Josepha Katharina Taumer (1855-1919). After graduating from high school in 1919, he studied zoology, chemistry and mathematics at the universities of Leipzig, Kiel and Freiburg im Breisgau. In 1925 he did his doctorate under Johannes Meisenheimer on the copulatory apparatus of stink bugs . In 1930 he completed his habilitation in Halle with Berthold Klatt with the thesis theory of flicker movement . At the University of Halle , he first worked with the zoologist Wolfgang von Buddenbrock . From 1938 he worked in Halle as an associate professor. At the suggestion of the biologist and geneticist Richard Goldschmidt , his book The Right-Left Problem in the Animal Kingdom and with Humans was created , a topic that should continue to occupy him. However, the main topic of his research was initially genetics and selection, especially in Drosophila .

At the time of National Socialism he was a member of the NS teachers' association from 1934 and of the NSDAP from 1937 .

During the Second World War he was drafted into the air force in 1942, shortly afterwards transferred to the Reich Office for Weather Protection and in 1943 to the Agrometeorological Research Center in Gießen, where he worked until the end of the war. After his release from captivity in May 1946, he first went back to Halle. In the same year he became associate professor at the Zoological Institute in Mainz, headed by Wolfgang von Buddenbrock, whose collaborator he had already been in Halle. In 1949 he was appointed to succeed Erich von Holst at the University of Heidelberg , where he set up a biomathematics department. In 1950 he published the essay Annidation as a Fifth Evolutionary Factor , in which he introduced the term annidation into technical terminology.

He died in 1959 at a biometrics conference in Leipzig. His scientific papers are in the Heidelberg University Library .

Ludwig was the managing director and co-founder of the German Region of the International Biometric Society .

In 1949 he was elected a member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

Wilhelm Ludwig published a large number of articles in German and international journals.

  • Darwin's selection theory in a modern version . Frankfurt a. M .: Senckenberg Museum 1948. (Writings and speeches.)
  • with FP Fischer, R. Wartmann: The optimal horopter. With a consequence of the subjective curvature of the sky . In: Pflugers Archiv-European Journal of Physiology Vol. 254, 1952, pp. 377-392.
  • The right-left problem in the animal kingdom and in humans: with an appendix right-left characteristics of plants. 1932. Reprint. Springer, Berlin 1970. (= monographs from the entire field of plants and animals, vol. 27). ISBN 978-3-54004963-0
  • with R. Wette: About the classification of asymmetries and testing of the right-left relationship In: Zeitschrift für Menschlich Vererbungs- und Konstitutionlehre Vol. 34, 1958, pp. 400-416.

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ^ Ernst Klee: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 382 f.
  2. ^ Heidelberg University Library: Heid. Hs. 3668: Estate of Prof. Dr. Wilhelm Ludwig .
personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German zoologist and geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH October 20, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Asch , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH January 23, 1959
Place of death Leipzig