Daniel Frederik Eschricht (18 March 1798 – 22 February 1863) was a Danish zoologist, physiologist, and anatomist known as an authority on whales. He was born in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...

, and studied medicine at

Frederiks Hospital The royal Frederiks Hospital was Denmark's first hospital in the present-day meaning of the word. It was founded by king Frederik V and financed by the earnings from the Norwegian Postal Service. The buildings, situated in Bredgade in Copen ...

, graduating in 1822. He was a student of

François Magendie __NOTOC__ François Magendie (6 October 1783 – 7 October 1855) was a French physiologist, considered a pioneer of experimental physiology. He is known for describing the foramen of Magendie. There is also a ''Magendie sign'', a downward ...

in Paris from 1824-1825, composing a thesis on

cranial nerves Cranial nerves are the nerves that emerge directly from the brain (including the brainstem), of which there are conventionally considered twelve pairs. Cranial nerves relay information between the brain and parts of the body, primarily to and f ...

, after which he studied with prominent European naturalists and anatomists, including

Georges Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...

. He joined the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

in 1829, becoming Professor of Anatomy and Physiology in 1836. The gray whale genus ''

Eschrichtius ''Eschrichtius'' is a genus of baleen whale containing two species: the gray whale (''E. robustus'') and the extinct Akishima whale ''Eschrichtius akishimaensis'', described in 2017, is one of two species, with the modern day gray whale, of t ...

'' was named for him a year after his death. In 1861, Eschricht dissected an orca and found thirteen common porpoises and fourteen seals inside.

Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne (;''Longman Pronunciation Dictionary''. ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905) was a French novelist, poet and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the ''Voyages extraor ...

referred to the incident in the Sargasso chapter of his 1870 novel ''

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' () is a science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may inclu ...

''. He was elected as a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS) is an American scholarly organization and learned society founded in 1743 in Philadelphia that promotes knowledge in the humanities and natural sciences through research, professional meetings, publicat ...

in 1863.

References

External links

* * 1798 births 1863 deaths 19th-century Danish zoologists Scientists from Copenhagen Academic staff of the University of Copenhagen Cetologists {{Zoologist-stub