Günter E. W. Schmidt (born 10 May 1926 in

Lübeck Lübeck (; or ; Latin: ), officially the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic City of Lübeck (), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 220,000 inhabitants, it is the second-largest city on the German Baltic Sea, Baltic coast and the second-larg ...

; died 23 December 2016 in Deutsch Evern) was a German

arachnologist Arachnology is the scientific study of arachnids, which comprise spiders and related invertebrates such as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, ticks, and mites. Those who study spiders and other arachnids are arachnologists. More narrowly ...

and author of a standard German work on

tarantula Tarantulas comprise a group of large and often hairy spiders of the family Theraphosidae. , 1,100 species have been identified, with 166 genera. The term "tarantula" is usually used to describe members of the family Theraphosidae, although ...

s, ''Die Vogelspinnen'' ("bird-eating spiders"). He has been described as one of the fathers of German arachnology. He studied biology and mostly worked in the pharmaceutical industry until his retirement.Obituary
for Günther Schmidt by John Osmani In 1975, he graduated with a PhD thesis on the arachnid fauna of the Canary Islands . From 1986, his scientific work was concentrated mainly on tarantulas. The

World Spider Catalog The World Spider Catalog (WSC) is an online searchable database concerned with spider taxonomy. It aims to list all accepted families, genera and species, as well as provide access to the related taxonomic literature. The WSC began as a series of ...

lists 234 species names of which he is the author or co-author (not all currently accepted), of which 69 are in the family Theraphosidae (

s).

Books

His books include: *; followed by further editions, including * *

Species names

Several species names of spiders honour Günter Schmidt, including: * ''Haplopelma schmidti'' von Wirth, 1991 (now '' Cyriopagopus schmidti'') * ''Aphonopelma schmidti'' Smith, 1995 (now a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...

of '' Aphonopelma chalcodes'') * '' Cyrtopholis schmidti'' Rudloff, 1996

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schmidt, Günter German arachnologists 1926 births 2016 deaths 20th-century German zoologists