Leo Zehntner (19 December 1864 in

Reigoldswil Reigoldswil is a municipality in the district of Waldenburg in the canton of Basel-Country in Switzerland. History Reigoldswil is first mentioned in 1152 as ''Rigoltswilre''. Geography Reigoldswil has an area, , of . Of this area, or 46.2% ...

– 3 April 1961 in

Liestal Liestal (, Standard ), formerly spelled Liesthal, is the capital of Liestal District and the canton of Basel-Landschaft in Switzerland, south of Basel. Liestal is an industrial town with a cobbled-street Old Town. The official language of Li ...

) was a Swiss naturalist.

Biography

He studied natural sciences in

Basel , french: link=no, Bâlois(e), it, Basilese , neighboring_municipalities= Allschwil (BL), Hégenheim (FR-68), Binningen (BL), Birsfelden (BL), Bottmingen (BL), Huningue (FR-68), Münchenstein (BL), Muttenz (BL), Reinach (BL), Riehen (BS) ...

and Bern, and following graduation (1890), he worked as an assistant to

entomologist Entomology () is the scientific study of insects, a branch of zoology. In the past the term "insect" was less specific, and historically the definition of entomology would also include the study of animals in other arthropod groups, such as arach ...

Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure Henri Louis Frédéric de Saussure (; ; 27 November 1829 – 20 February 1905) was a Swiss mineralogist and entomologist specialising in studies of Hymenoptera and Orthopteroid insects. He also was a prolific taxonomist. Biography Saussu ...

Geneva Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...

. In 1894 he began work as a

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 ...

at the

Pasuruan Pasuruan ( nl, Pasoeroean) is a city in East Java, Java, Indonesia. It had a population of 186,262 at the 2010 Census and 208,006 at the 2020 Census. It is surrounded by, but administratively separate from, Pasuruan Regency. It is located around ...

inspection station on

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

, where he dealt with pests that plagued

sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus '' Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stal ...

plantations. In 1901 in Salatiga (Java) he opened an inspection station for cacao cultivation.Zürich Herbaria
(biography)Dizionario storico della Svizzera
(biography) From 1906 to 1918 he served as director of the agricultural institute for the

State of Bahia Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Rio de Janeiro) and the 5th-largest b ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, during which, he is credited with the discovery of eight new plant species. In 1920 he returned to Europe, and from 1926 to 1941, he served as mayor of the town of Reigoldswil. The Malagasy

millipede Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterised by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a re ...

genus ''Zehntnerobolus'' commemorates his name, as does taxa with the specific epithet of ''zehntneri'', an example being the

cactus A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Gre ...

species ''

Quiabentia zehntneri ''Quiabentia zehntneri'' is a species of plant in the family Cactaceae. It is endemic to Brazil. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forests and subtropical or tropical dry shrubland. It is threatened by habitat loss Habit ...

''.

Selected works

* ''Histoire naturelle des orthoptères'', 1895 (with Henri de Saussure) – Natural history of

Orthoptera Orthoptera () is an order of insects that comprises the grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets, including closely related insects, such as the bush crickets or katydids and wētā. The order is subdivided into two suborders: Caelifera – grass ...

. * ''De plantenluizen van het suikerriet op Java'', 1899. * ''Myriopoden aus madagaskar und Zanzibar; gesammelt von Dr. A. Voeltzkow'', 1901 (with Henri de Saussure) –

Myriapoda Myriapods () are the members of subphylum Myriapoda, containing arthropods such as millipedes and centipedes. The group contains about 13,000 species, all of them terrestrial. The fossil record of myriapods reaches back into the late Silurian, ...

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

and

Zanzibar Zanzibar (; ; ) is an insular semi-autonomous province which united with Tanganyika in 1964 to form the United Republic of Tanzania. It is an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islan ...

; collected by

Alfred Voeltzkow Alfred Voeltzkow (14 April 1860 – February 1947) was a German zoologist and botanist from Berlin, Brandenburg. He studied sciences at the universities of Heidelberg, Berlin, Freiburg, and Würzburg, receiving his doctorate at Freiburg in 18 ...

. * ''Le cacaoyer dans l'état de Bahia'', 1914 – On cacao in the State of Bahia. * ''Estudo sobre as maniçobas do estado da Bahia, em relação ao problema das seccas'', 1914.HathiTrust Digital Library
(published works)

Bibliography

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zehntner, Leo 1864 births 1961 deaths Swiss naturalists Swiss entomologists People from Basel-Landschaft