Ferdinand Richters (1 May 1849,
Hamburg
Hamburg (, ; nds, label=Hamburg German, Low Saxon, Hamborg ), officially the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (german: Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg; nds, label=Low Saxon, Friee un Hansestadt Hamborg),. is the List of cities in Germany by popul ...
— 3 July 1914) was a
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
zoologist
Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and ...
. Richters was the curator of
Crustacea
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...
at the
Naturmuseum Senckenberg
The Naturmuseum Senckenberg is a museum of natural history, located in Frankfurt am Main. It is the second-largest of its type in Germany. The museum contains a large and diverse collection of birds with 90,000 bird skins, 5,050 egg sets, 17,0 ...
from 1878 until his death in 1914.
He studied sciences at the Universities of
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...
and
Heidelberg
Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...
, receiving his doctorate in 1873 with a thesis on
phyllosoma
The phyllosoma is the larval stage of spiny, slipper and coral lobsters (Palinuridae, Scyllaridae and Synaxidae), and represents one of the most significant characteristics that unify them into the taxon Achelata. Its body is remarkably thin, ...
. As a student he had as instructors,
Friedrich Wöhler
Friedrich Wöhler () FRS(For) HonFRSE (31 July 180023 September 1882) was a German chemist known for his work in inorganic chemistry, being the first to isolate the chemical elements beryllium and yttrium in pure metallic form. He was the first ...
,
Gustav Kirchhoff
Gustav Robert Kirchhoff (; 12 March 1824 – 17 October 1887) was a German physicist who contributed to the fundamental understanding of electrical circuits, spectroscopy, and the emission of black-body radiation by heated objects.
He coin ...
and
Robert Bunsen
Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen (;
30 March 1811
– 16 August 1899) was a German chemist. He investigated emission spectra of heated elements, and discovered caesium (in 1860) and rubidium (in 1861) with the physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. The Bu ...
. In 1873/74 he worked as an assistant in the zoological institute at Göttingen, afterwards relocating to
Frankfurt am Main
Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian dialects, Hessian: , "Franks, Frank ford (crossing), ford on the Main (river), Main"), is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as o ...
, where he found employment at the Senckenberg Institute. In 1886, he was named vice-director of the ''
Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung
The Senckenberg Nature Research Society (german: link=no, Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, until 2008 ''Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft'') is a German scholarly society with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main.
Overvie ...
'', where three years later, he was appointed first director.
[Water Bear web base]
biography & bibliography
While on a scientific excursion to the
Taunus Mountains
The Taunus is a mountain range in Hesse, Germany, located north of Frankfurt. The tallest peak in the range is ''Großer Feldberg'' at 878 m; other notable peaks are ''Kleiner Feldberg'' (825 m) and ''Altkönig'' (798 m).
The Taunus range spans ...
in 1900, he developed an interest in
tardigrade
Tardigrades (), known colloquially as water bears or moss piglets, are a phylum of eight-legged segmented micro-animals. They were first described by the German zoologist Johann August Ephraim Goeze in 1773, who called them Kleiner Wasserbär ...
s, subsequently publishing numerous papers on the phylum. He is credited with the discovery of many tardigrade species, including a number from the genus ''
Diphascon
''Diphascon'' is a genus of water bear or moss piglet, a tardigrade in the class Eutardigrada.
Species
; Subgenus Adropion
* '' Diphascon carolae'' Binda & Pilato 1969
* '' Diphascon clavatum'' (Bartos, 1935)
* '' Diphascon gordonense'' Pilato, ...
''.
[
]
Partial bibliography
* ''Die Phyllosomen : Ein Beitrag zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Loricaten'', (1873) (dissertation: Göttingen) – Phllosoma : Contribution to the historical development of loricates.
* ''Beiträge zur Meeresfauna der Insel Mauritius und der Seychellen'', by Karl August Möbius Karl may refer to:
People
* Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name
* Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne
* Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer
* Karl of Austria, last Austri ...
(Foraminifera
Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular ectoplasm for catching food and other uses; and commonly ...
); Ferdinand Richters (Decapoda
The Decapoda or decapods (literally "ten-footed") are an order of crustaceans within the class Malacostraca, including many familiar groups, such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp and prawns. Most decapods are scavengers. The order is es ...
) and Eduard von Martens
Eduard von Martens (18 April 1831 – 14 August 1904) also known as ''Carl'' or ''Karl Eduard von Martens'', was a German zoologist.
Born in Stuttgart in 1831, von Martens attended university in Tübingen, where he graduated in 1855. He then mo ...
( Mollusca), (1880) – Contribution to the marine fauna of Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...
and the Seychelles
Seychelles (, ; ), officially the Republic of Seychelles (french: link=no, République des Seychelles; Creole: ''La Repiblik Sesel''), is an archipelagic state consisting of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city, ...
.
* ''Nordische Tardigraden'', in: Zool. Anz., Bd. 27, Nr. 5, p. 168-172, 2 Fig., Leipzig
Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as ...
1903.
* ''Arktische Tardigraden'', in: Fauna arct., Bd. 3, p. 495-508, Tab. 15-16, Jena
Jena () is a German city and the second largest city in Thuringia. Together with the nearby cities of Erfurt and Weimar, it forms the central metropolitan area of Thuringia with approximately 500,000 inhabitants, while the city itself has a po ...
1904.
* ''Campagne arctique de 1907. tardigrades'', 1911 (published in French).[
]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Richters, Ferdinand
1849 births
1914 deaths
19th-century German zoologists
German carcinologists
Scientists from Hamburg
University of Göttingen alumni
Heidelberg University alumni
20th-century German zoologists