Moriz Sassi or Moritz Sassi (13 June 1880 – 25 September 1967) was an Austrian ornithologist who worked at the

Natural History Museum in Vienna The Natural History Museum Vienna (german: Naturhistorisches Museum Wien) is a large natural history museum located in Vienna, Austria. It is one of the most important natural history museums worldwide. The NHM Vienna is one of the largest muse ...

. In 1933 he was made a government councilor and given the title of ''hofrat''. Sassi was born in Vienna to Eugen and Ida who owned the Schwindgasse palace in Vienna and Villa Sassi in nort. Sassi went to school at Hegelgasse and volunteered with the Dragoons. He then studied zoology at the

University of Vienna The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...

under Karl Grobben and Berthold Hatschek writing a dissertation on the anatomy of ''Anomia ephippium'' for which he received a doctorate in 1903. He then followed an interest in art. In 1905 he joined an expedition into Anglo-Egyptian Sudan led by Franz Werner and collected numerous specimens of birds and mammals, and describing several as new to science including ''Procavia slatini'' (now merely a synonym for the

rock hyrax The rock hyrax (; ''Procavia capensis''), also called dassie, Cape hyrax, rock rabbit, and (in the King James Bible) coney, is a medium-sized terrestrial mammal native to Africa and the Middle East. Commonly referred to in South Africa as the das ...

) dedicated to his friend Rudolf Slatin. In 1908 he joined the Natural History Museum in Vienna under

Franz Steindachner Franz Steindachner (11 November 1834 in Vienna – 10 December 1919 in Vienna) was an Austrian zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. He published over 200 papers on fishes and over 50 papers on reptiles and amphibians. Steindachner descri ...

and trained under

Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau Ludwig Lorenz von Liburnau (26 August 1856, Fiume - 9 December 1943, St. Gilgen) was an Austrian zoologist. He was the son of naturalist Josef Roman Lorenz von Liburnau (1825-1911). In 1879 he obtained his PhD from the University of Vienna, r ...

. During World War I, he was sent to the South East Front and saw action in the battle for Lovćen River in Montenegro. In 1920 he became a paid scientific assistant and began to work on the collection of Emil Weiske (1867-1950). This was followed by examination of the collections made by Steindachner in Brazil,

Viktor Pietschmann Viktor Pietschmann (27 October 1881 – 11 November 1956) was an Austrian ichthyologist at the Vienna Museum of Natural History. He was the curator of the fish collection from 1919 to 1946 and made collecting trips to the Barents Sea, Greenland, ...

and Selim Hassoun in Mesopotamia, and those by Rudolf Grauer in East Africa. He also joined some expedition including to Dalmatia and Costa Rica. He organized a meeting of the German Ornithological Society in Vienna in 1932. During the war years, he ensured that the bird collections were safely stored at the Schönborn Palace. He became a government councillor in 1933 and a court councillor in 1948. Sassi retired in 1949. Several taxa were named in his honour by his fellow ornithologists including ''Serinus flavivertex sassii'' by Oscar Neumann and ''Accipiter minullus sassii'' by

Erwin Stresemann Erwin Friedrich Theodor Stresemann (22 November 1889, in Dresden – 20 November 1972, in East Berlin) was a German naturalist and ornithologist. Stresemann was an ornithologist of extensive breadth who compiled one of the first and most compr ...

. A genus ''Sassius'' was created by

Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild Lionel Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, Baron de Rothschild, (8 February 1868 – 27 August 1937) was a British banker, politician, zoologist and soldier, who was a member of the Rothschild family. As a Zionist leader, he was prese ...

and

Ernst Hartert Ernst Johann Otto Hartert (29 October 1859 – 11 November 1933) was a widely published German ornithologist. Life and career Hartert was born in Hamburg, Germany on 29 October 1859. In July 1891, he married the illustrator Claudia Bernadine ...

in 1926 for a purported Hawaiian honeycreeper '' Sassius simplex'' which was later identified to be a based on a composite fake specimen.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sassi, Moriz 1880 births 1967 deaths