Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (19 April 1795 – 27 June 1876) was a German

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

zoologist Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the structure, embryology, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct, and how they interact with their ecosystems. Zoology is one ...

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

comparative anatomist Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of different species. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny (the evolution of species). The science began in the classical era, continuing in t ...

, geologist, and microscopist. He is considered to be one of the most famous and productive scientists of his time.

Early collections

The son of a judge, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg was born in Delitzsch, near

Leipzig Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...

. He first studied theology at the

University of Leipzig Leipzig University (), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 December 1409 by Frederick I, Electo ...

, then medicine and

natural sciences Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

and became a friend of the famous

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

Alexander von Humboldt Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, natural history, naturalist, List of explorers, explorer, and proponent of Romanticism, Romantic philosophy and Romanticism ...

. In 1818, he completed his doctoral dissertation on fungi, ''Sylvae mycologicae Berolinenses.'' In 1820–1825, on a scientific expedition to the Middle East with his friend

Wilhelm Hemprich Wilhelm Friedrich Hemprich (24 June 1796 – 30 June 1825) was a German natural history, naturalist and explorer. Hemprich was born in Kłodzko, Glatz (Kłodzko), Prussian Silesia, and studied medicine at Breslau and Berlin. It was in Berlin that ...

, he collected thousands of specimens of plants and animals. He investigated parts of

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

, the

Libyan Desert The Libyan Desert (not to be confused with the Libyan Sahara) is a geographical region filling the northeastern Sahara Desert, from eastern Libya to the Western Desert (Egypt), Western Desert of Egypt and far northwestern Sudan. On medieval m ...

, the

Nile valley The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the longest river i ...

and the northern coasts of the

Red Sea The Red Sea is a sea inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. Its connection to the ocean is in the south, through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden. To its north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and th ...

, where he made a special study of the

coral Corals are colonial marine invertebrates within the subphylum Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact Colony (biology), colonies of many identical individual polyp (zoology), polyps. Coral species include the important Coral ...

s. Subsequently, parts of

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

Arabia The Arabian Peninsula (, , or , , ) or Arabia, is a peninsula in West Asia, situated north-east of Africa on the Arabian plate. At , comparable in size to India, the Arabian Peninsula is the largest peninsula in the world. Geographically, the ...

and Abyssinia were examined. Some results of these travels and of the important collections that had been made were reported on by Humboldt in 1826. While in Sudan he designed the mansion of the local governor of

Dongola Dongola (), also known as Urdu or New Dongola, is the capital of Northern State in Sudan, on the banks of the Nile. It should not be confused with Old Dongola, a now deserted medieval city located 80 km upstream on the opposite bank. Et ...

, Abidin Bey. After his return, Ehrenberg published several papers on insects and

s and two volumes ''Symbolae physicae'' (1828–1834), in which many particulars of the

mammal A mammal () is a vertebrate animal of the Class (biology), class Mammalia (). Mammals are characterised by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young, a broad neocortex region of the brain, fur or hair, and three ...

s, birds, insects, etc., were made public. Other observations were communicated to scientific societies.

Focus on microscopic organisms

Ehrenberg was appointed professor of medicine at Berlin University in 1827. In 1829 he accompanied Humboldt through eastern Russia to the Chinese frontier. After his return he began to concentrate his studies on microscopic organisms, which until then had not been systematically studied. For nearly 30 years Ehrenberg examined samples of water, soil, sediment, blowing dust and rock and described thousands of new species, among them well-known

flagellate A flagellate is a cell or organism with one or more whip-like appendages called flagella. The word ''flagellate'' also describes a particular construction (or level of organization) characteristic of many prokaryotes and eukaryotes and the ...

s such as ''

Euglena ''Euglena'' is a genus of Unicellular organism, single-celled, flagellate eukaryotes. It is the best-known and most widely studied member of the class Euglenoidea, a diverse group containing some 54 genera and at least 200 species. Species of '' ...

'',

ciliate The ciliates are a group of alveolates characterized by the presence of hair-like organelles called cilia, which are identical in structure to flagellum, eukaryotic flagella, but are in general shorter and present in much larger numbers, with a ...

s such as ''Paramecium aurelia'' and ''Paramecium caudatum,'' and many fossils, in nearly 400 scientific publications. He was particularly interested in a unicellular group of

protist A protist ( ) or protoctist is any eukaryotic organism that is not an animal, land plant, or fungus. Protists do not form a natural group, or clade, but are a paraphyletic grouping of all descendants of the last eukaryotic common ancest ...

s called

diatom A diatom (Neo-Latin ''diatoma'') is any member of a large group comprising several Genus, genera of algae, specifically microalgae, found in the oceans, waterways and soils of the world. Living diatoms make up a significant portion of Earth's B ...

s, but he also studied, and named, many species of

radiolaria The Radiolaria, also called Radiozoa, are unicellular eukaryotes of diameter 0.1–0.2 mm that produce intricate mineral skeletons, typically with a central capsule dividing the cell into the inner and outer portions of endoplasm and ect ...

foraminifera Foraminifera ( ; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are unicellular organism, single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class (biology), class of Rhizarian protists characterized by streaming granular Ectoplasm (cell bio ...

and dinoflagellates. This research had an important bearing on some of the infusorial earths used for polishing and other economic purposes; they added, moreover, largely to our knowledge of the

microorganism A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic scale, microscopic size, which may exist in its unicellular organism, single-celled form or as a Colony (biology)#Microbial colonies, colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen ...

s of certain

geological formation A geological formation, or simply formation, is a body of rock having a consistent set of physical characteristics (lithology) that distinguishes it from adjacent bodies of rock, and which occupies a particular position in the layers of rock expo ...

s, especially of the

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

, and of the marine and freshwater accumulations. Until Ehrenberg took up the study it was not known that considerable masses of rock were composed of minute forms of animals or plants. He also demonstrated that the

phosphorescence Phosphorescence is a type of photoluminescence related to fluorescence. When exposed to light (radiation) of a shorter wavelength, a phosphorescent substance will glow, absorbing the light and reemitting it at a longer wavelength. Unlike fluor ...

of the sea was due to organisms. He was a member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences () is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special responsibility for promoting nat ...

from 1836 and a foreign member of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

of London from 1837. In 1839, he won the Wollaston Medal, the highest award granted by the

Geological Society of London The Geological Society of London, known commonly as the Geological Society, is a learned society based in the United Kingdom. It is the oldest national geological society in the world and the largest in Europe, with more than 12,000 Fellows. Fe ...

. Ehrenberg was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1849. He continued until late in life to investigate the microscopic organisms of the deep sea and of various geological formations. He died in

on 27 June 1876.

Legacy

After his death in 1876, his collections of microscopic organisms were deposited in the Berlin's Natural History Museum (this museum was a part of the

University of Berlin The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humbol ...

until it left the university in 2009). The "Ehrenberg Collection" includes 40,000 microscope preparations, 5,000 raw samples, 3,000 pencil and ink drawings, and nearly 1,000 letters of correspondence. His collection of

scorpion Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the Order (biology), order Scorpiones. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by a pair of Chela (organ), grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward cur ...

s, and other arachnids from the Middle East, is also held in the Berlin Museum. Many herbaria around the world also hold botanical collections made by Ehrenberg, including the

National Herbarium of Victoria The National Herbarium of Victoria (Index Herbariorum code: MEL) is one of Australia's earliest herbaria and the oldest scientific institution in Victoria. Its 1.56 million specimens of preserved plants, fungi and algae—collectively known ...

at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, the

National Museum of Natural History, France The French National Museum of Natural History ( ; abbr. MNHN) is the national natural history museum of France and a of higher education part of Sorbonne University. The main museum, with four galleries, is located in Paris, France, within the ...

and the herbarium at the

Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. An internationally important botanical research and education institution, it employs 1,10 ...

. He was also the first winner of the Leeuwenhoek Medal in 1877. In his hometown, Delitzsch, the highest A-Level school, the "Ehrenberg-Gymnasium" is named after him. The best student of the school year receives the Ehrenberg Prize and a scholarship. Ehrenberg Island in the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), previously known as Spitsbergen or Spitzbergen, is a Norway, Norwegian archipelago that lies at the convergence of the Arctic Ocean with the Atlantic Ocean. North of continental Europe, mainland Europe, it lies about midway be ...

archipelago is named after Ehrenberg. In 1998 the Linnean Society of London dedicated a special issue to "Christian Gottfried Ehrenburg (1795–1876): The man and his legacy".

Family

Christian Ehrenberg was the son of Johann Gottfried Ehrenberg (1757–1826) and his wife Christiane Dorothea Becker (1769–1808). His brother Carl August Ehrenberg (1801–1849) became a botanist and plant collector. After attending the same expedition (as part of Humboldt's team) with

Gustav Rose Prof Gustavus ("Gustav") Rose Royal Society of London, FRSFor HFRSE (18 March 1798 – 15 July 1873) was a German mineralogist who was a native of Berlin. He was President of the German Geological Society from 1863 to 1873. Life He was born in Be ...

, (who was the brother of Heinrich Rose), Ehrenberg married Gustav's cousin Julie Rose (1804–1848). After their first son died in infancy they had four daughters: Helene (* 1834), Mathilde (1835–1890), Laura (*1836) and Clara Ehrenberg (1838–1916). His youngest daughter Clara Ehrenberg was his assistant for over twelve years. She aided his scientific research, organised and indexed his collections and correspondence, and prepared a taxonomic reference book. Clara was also a published scientific illustrator. Helene married the botanist Johannes von Hanstein and Mathilde married the mineralogist Karl Friedrich August Rammelsberg. In 1852 Ehrenberg married his second wife, Karoline Friederike Friccius (1812–95), who was related to the chemist Eilhard Mitscherlich. The couple had one son, Hermann Alexander Ehernberg.

Standard author abbreviation

His zoological author abbreviation is Ehrenberg.

Publications

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1828). ''Naturgeschichtliche Reisen durch Nord-Afrika und West-Asien in den jahren 1820 bis 1825 von Dr. W.F. Hemprich und Dr. C.G. Ehrenberg. Historischer Theil.'' Ernst Siegfried Mittler: Berlin

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1828–1900). ''Symbolae physicae'', Species:Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg#Symbolae physicae. * Ehrenberg, C.G. (1830–1836). ''Vorträge in der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin im Jahre 1830–1836''

** Band 1 : ''Organisation, Systematik und geographisches Verhältniss der Infusionsthierchen''. Berlin: gedruckt in Druckerei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1830

*** ''Die geographische Verbreitung der Infusionsthierchen in Nord-Afrika und West-Asien, beobachtet auf Hemprich und Ehrenbergs Reisen'', S. 1–20

*** ''Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Organisation der Infusorien und ihrer geographischen Verbreitung, besonders in Sibirien'', S. 21–108

** Band 2 : ''Zur Erkenntniss der Organisation in der Richtung des kleinsten Raumes''. Berlin: gedruckt in Druckerei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1832–1836

(note: incorrect name at Google Books). *** ''Über die Entwickelung und Lebensdauer der Infusionsthiere, nebst ferneren Beiträgen zu einer Vergleichung ihrer organischen Systeme'', 1831, S. 1–154

*** ''Dritter Beitrag zur Erkenntniss grosser Organisation in der Richtung des kleinsten Raumes'', S. 145–336

*** ''Zusätze zur Erkenntniss grosser organischer Ausbildung in den kleinsten thierischen Organismen'', 1835, S. 151–180

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1835). Die Akalephen des rothen Meeres und der Organismus der Medusen der Ostsee. ''Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin''. p. 181–260, with foldout between p. 260–261

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1838). ''Die Infusionsthierchen als vollkommene Organismen''. 2 vols., Leipzig

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1839). ''Recherches sur l'organisation des animaux infusoires.'' J.B. Baillière: Paris

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1840). ''Das grössere Infusorienwerke''. Königliche Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin Bericht, 198–219. * Ehrenberg, C.G. (1843). ''Verbreitung und Einfluss des mikroskopischen Lebens in Süd-und Nord Amerika''. Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin Physikalische Abhandlungen, 1841:291–446. * Gravenhorst, J.L.C. (1844). ''Naturgeschichte der Infusionsthierchen nach Ehrenbergs groβem Werke über diese Thiere.'' Verlag und Druck von Gratz, Barth und Comp.: Breslau

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1848). Uber eigenthumliche auf den Bamen des Urwaldes in SU-Amerika zahlreich lebend mikroskopische oft kieselschalige Organismen. Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin Nonatsber. 213–220. * Ehrenberg, C.G. (1854). ''Mikrogeologie''. 2 vols., Leipzig

* Ehrenberg, C.G. (1875). ''Fortsetzung der mikrogeologischen Studien''. Abhandlungen der königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaft: Berlin. * The Ehrenberg Collection (including plates from ''Mikrogeologie'', 1854). Available at ''Museum für Naturkunde'', ''Humboldt-Universität'

* See also

.

References

* * * Baker, I. D. B. (1997) "C. G. Ehrenberg and W. F. Hemprich's Travels, 1820–1825, and the Insecta of the Symbolae Physicae". ''Deutsche Entomologische Zeitschrift'' 44, (2):165–202. * Kern, Ralf, ''Wissenschaftliche Instrumente in ihrer Zeit'', 4 vols., Cologne: Koenig, 2010.

External links

Wikidata query
listing taxa authored by him. *
Gaedike, R.; Groll, E. K. & Taeger, A. 2012: Bibliography of the entomological literature from the beginning until 1863 : online database – version 1.0 – Senckenberg Deutsches Entomologisches Institut.Ehrenberg-collection
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Ehrenberg, Christian Gottfried German taxonomists 1795 births People from Delitzsch 1876 deaths German phycologists German anatomists 19th-century German botanists German entomologists German mycologists Microscopists Leeuwenhoek Medal winners Wollaston Medal winners Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Foreign members of the Royal Society Honorary members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Leipzig University alumni Humboldt University of Berlin alumni Academic staff of the Humboldt University of Berlin People from the Electorate of Saxony German Protestants