Otto Friedrich Müller, also known as Otto Friedrich Mueller (2 November 1730 – 26 December 1784) was a Danish naturalist and scientific illustrator.

Biography

Müller was born in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan a ...

. He was educated for the church, became tutor to a young nobleman, and after several years' travel with him, settled in Copenhagen in 1767, and married a lady of wealth. His first important works, ''Fauna Insectorum Friedrichsdaliana'' (Leipzig, 1764), and ''Flora Friedrichsdaliana'' (Strasbourg, 1767), giving accounts of the insects and

flora Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''. ...

of the estate of

Frederiksdal Narsarmijit, formerly Narsaq Kujalleq and Frederiksdal, is a settlement in southern Greenland. It is located in the Kujalleq municipality near Cape Thorvaldsen. Its population was 66 in 2020. There has been a slow but steady pattern of emigrat ...

, near Copenhagen, recommended him to

Frederick V of Denmark Frederick V ( Danish and Norwegian: ''Frederik V''; 31 March 1723 – 14 January 1766) was King of Denmark–Norway and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein from 6 August 1746 until his death in 1766. He was the son of Christian VI of Denmark and Sophi ...

, by whom he was employed to continue the ''

Flora Danica ''Flora Danica'' is a comprehensive atlas of botany from the Age of Enlightenment, containing folio-sized pictures of all the wild plants native to Denmark, in the period from 1761 to 1883. History ''Flora Danica'' was proposed by G. C. Oede ...

'' a comprehensive atlas of the

of Denmark. Müller added two volumes to the three published by Georg Christian Oeder since 1761. The study of invertebrates began to occupy his attention almost exclusively, and in 1771 he produced a work in German on “Certain Worms inhabiting Fresh and Salt Water,” which described many new species of those annulose animals called by Linnaeus aphroditae and

nereides In Greek mythology, the Nereids or Nereides ( ; grc, Νηρηΐδες, Nērēḯdes; , also Νημερτές) are sea nymphs (female spirits of sea waters), the 50 daughters of the 'Old Man of the Sea' Nereus and the Oceanid Doris, sisters ...

, and gave much additional information respecting their habits. He discovered the first diatom ever seen, the colonial diatom ''Bacillaria paradoxa'', though he thought it was an animal because of its movement. In his ''Vermium Terrestrium et Fluviatilium, seu Animalium Infusoriorum, Helminthecorum, et Testaceorum non Marinorum, succincta Historia'' (2 vols. in 4to, Copenhagen and Leipzig, 1773–74), he arranged the Infusoria for the first time into genera and

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

. His ''Hydrachnæ in Aquis Daniæ Palustribus detectæ et descriptæ'' (Leipzig, 1781), and ''Entomostraca'' (1785), describe many species of microorganisms previously unknown, amongst other

dinoflagellates The dinoflagellates ( Greek δῖνος ''dinos'' "whirling" and Latin ''flagellum'' "whip, scourge") are a monophyletic group of single-celled eukaryotes constituting the phylum Dinoflagellata and are usually considered algae. Dinoflagellates ...

. To these was added an illustrated work on the infusoria, published in 1786. These three works, according to the contemporary dean of naturalists

Baron Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in nat ...

, give the author “a place in the first rank of those naturalists who have enriched science with original observations.” His ''Zoologiae Danicae Prodromus'' (1776) was the first survey of the fauna of the combined kingdoms of

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of ...

and Denmark, and classified over three thousand local species. He was one of the first to study microorganisms, and established the classification of several groups of animals in addition to the infusoria, including Hydrachnellae and

Entomostraca Entomostraca is a historical subclass of crustaceans, no longer in technical use. It was originally considered one of the two major lineages of crustaceans (the other being the class Malacostraca), combining all other classes—Branchiopoda, Cepha ...

, all unknown to Linnaeus. He was a member of the Academia Caesarea Leopoldina, a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (elected in 1769), the

Académie des sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French scientific research. It was at ...

, Paris, and the Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Science. He had a lasting impact on zoological studies across Europe.

Works

*''Fauna Insectorum Fridrichsdaliana''. Lipsiae: Hafniae et Gleditsch xxiv 96 pp. (1764). *''Vermium terrestrium et fluviatilium, seu animalium infusoriorum, helminthicorum, et testaecorum, non marinorum, succincta historia. Volumen alterum''. pp. I-XXVI 1-36 1–214, -10 Havniæ openhagenet Lipsiæ eipzig Heineck and Faber

(1773-1774). *''Zoologiae Danicae Prodromus, seu Animalium Daniae et Norvegiae Indigenarum characteres, nomina, et synonyma imprimis popularium''.... Copenhagen, Hallager for the author

(1776).
"... the first manual on this topic (Danish and Norwegian Zoology) and was for many years the most comprehensive. It was planned as the beginning of a large illustrated fauna, but only one volume appeared before Müller's death; the following volumes, including those prepared by Søren Abildgaard and Martin Heinrich Rathke, never reached the standard of the ''Flora Danica'' begun by Georg Christian Oeder"''Dictionary of Scientific Biography''. 16 vols. New York. 1981. * ''Animalcula infusoria fluviatilia et marina, quae detexit, systematice descripsit et ad vivum delineari curavit''. Havniae openhagenet Lipsiae eipzig Mölleri

(1786). * ''Entomostraca seu Insecta Testacea, quae in aquis Daniae et Norvegiae reperit, descripsit et iconibus illustravit''. 135 pp.

(1785).

Notes

References

* Spärck, R.(1932) “Otto Friedrich Müller” in: Meisen, V. ''Prominent Danish Scientists through the Ages''. University Library of Copenhagen 450th Anniversary. Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard, pp. 60–64. * *

External links

Müller's works at GDZ Göttigen
(Search as Mueller)

��Gastropod species named after Otto Müller: Helix Aspersa Müller. Pictures of snail and of its anatomy. {{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Otto Friedrich Danish naturalists 18th-century Danish zoologists 1730 births 1784 deaths Danish carcinologists Danish ornithologists Danish lepidopterists Members of the French Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Danish scientific illustrators Scientists from Copenhagen

Biography

Works

See also

Notes

References

External links