Johann Julius Walbaum (30 June 1724 – 21 August 1799) was a German physician, naturalist and fauna

taxonomist In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are give ...

Works

As an ichthyologist, he was the first to describe many previously unknown fish species from remote parts of the globe, such as the

Great Barracuda ''Sphyraena barracuda'', commonly known as the great barracuda, is a species of barracuda: large, predatory ray-finned fish found in subtropical oceans around the world. Distribution and habitat The great barracuda is present in tropical to warm ...

(''Sphyraena barracuda''), the Chum salmon (''Oncorhynchus keta'') from the

Kamchatka River The Kamchatka (russian: Камча́тка) is the longest river in Kamchatka peninsula, located in Kamchatka Krai in the Russian Far East. It flows into the Pacific Ocean at the town Ust-Kamchatsk, on the east coast of Kamchatka. It is long, ...

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

, and the curimatá-pacú (''

Prochilodus ''Prochilodus'' is a genus of freshwater fish from the family Prochilodontidae. This family include two other genera, '' Ichthyoelephas'' and ''Semaprochilodus'', which have been included in ''Prochilodus'' instead. The greatest species richness ...

marggravii'') from the São Francisco River in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. He was also the first to observe gloves as a preventative against infection in medical surgery. In 1758, the gloves he observed were made from the

cecum The cecum or caecum is a pouch within the peritoneum that is considered to be the beginning of the large intestine. It is typically located on the right side of the body (the same side of the body as the appendix, to which it is joined). The wo ...

of the sheep, rather than

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, an ...

, which had not yet been discovered.

Legacy

The Natural History Museum in Lübeck, opened in 1893, was based on Walbaum's extensive scientific collection, which was lost during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

References

German naturalists German taxonomists 01 1724 births 1799 deaths German ichthyologists People from Wolfenbüttel People from Brunswick-Lüneburg 18th-century German physicians 18th-century German zoologists 18th-century German male writers {{Germany-med-bio-stub

Works

Legacy

See also

References