Theodor Fuchs (15 September 1842 in Eperies – 5 October 1925 in

Steinach am Brenner Steinach am Brenner is a market town in the district of Innsbruck-Land in the Austrian state of Tyrol located south of Innsbruck in the Wipptal at the Sill River. Geography Steinach am Brenner is located in Wipptal, along the Sill River Valley at ...

) was an Austrian

geologist A geologist is a scientist who studies the solid, liquid, and gaseous matter that constitutes Earth and other terrestrial planets, as well as the processes that shape them. Geologists usually study geology, earth science, or geophysics, alt ...

and

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of foss ...

. He studied geology and paleontology 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 ...

as a pupil of

Eduard Suess Eduard Suess (; 20 August 1831 - 26 April 1914) was an Austrian geologist and an expert on the geography of the Alps. He is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana (proposed in 1861) and t ...

(doctorate 1863). Following graduation, he worked as an assistant at the ''Hofmineralienkabinett'' in Vienna, being named its curator in 1880. From 1889 to 1904 he was director of the geologic-paleontological department 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 1897 he became an associate professor of paleontology at the university.Fuchs Theodor
In:

Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 The ''Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950'' (''ÖBL''), ''Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815-1950'', is a dictionary of biographical entries for individuals who have contributed to the history of Austria, published by the Austri ...

(ÖBL). Band 1, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien 1957, S. 379. His primary research dealt with studies of

stratigraphic Stratigraphy is a branch of geology concerned with the study of rock layers ( strata) and layering (stratification). It is primarily used in the study of sedimentary and layered volcanic rocks. Stratigraphy has three related subfields: lithostr ...

conditions of the Late Tertiary of the

Vienna Basin The Vienna Basin (german: Wiener Becken, cz, Vídeňská pánev, sk, Viedenská kotlina, Hungarian: ''Bécsi-medence'') is a geologically young tectonic burial basin and sedimentary basin in the seam area between the Alps, the Carpathians and ...

and investigations of

Tertiary Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non- avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...

deposits in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on th ...

. In 1894 he proposed the Chattian age, a

chronostratigraphic Chronostratigraphy is the branch of stratigraphy that studies the ages of rock strata in relation to time. The ultimate aim of chronostratigraphy is to arrange the sequence of deposition and the time of deposition of all rocks within a geological ...

stage of the

Oligocene epoch The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch of the Paleogene Period and extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that define the epoch are well identified but th ...

. In 1895 he was the first to report on soft sediment deformations known today as " load casts" — at the time, Fuchs used the descriptive term ''Fließwülste'' (flow crests).

Selected works

* ''Die Conchylienfauna der Eocaenbildungen von Kalinowka, im Gouvernement Cherson im südlichen Russland'', 1869 – The

conch Conch () is a common name of a number of different medium-to-large-sized sea snails. Conch shells typically have a high spire and a noticeable siphonal canal (in other words, the shell comes to a noticeable point at both ends). In North Am ...

fauna in the

Eocene The Eocene ( ) Epoch is a geological epoch that lasted from about 56 to 33.9 million years ago (mya). It is the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the modern Cenozoic Era. The name ''Eocene'' comes from the Ancient Greek (''ēṓs'', " ...

strata at Kalinovka, in the

Kherson Governorate The Kherson Governorate (1802–1922; russian: Херсонская губерния, translit.: ''Khersonskaya guberniya''; uk, Херсонська губернія, translit=Khersonska huberniia), was an administrative territorial unit (also ...

of southern Russia. * ''Beitraege zur Geologie und Palaeontologie der libyschen Wüste und der angrenzenden Gebiete von Aegypten'', 1883 (with

Karl Alfred von Zittel Karl Alfred Ritter von Zittel (25 September 1839 – 5 January 1904) was a German palaeontologist best known for his ''Handbuch der Palaeontologie'' (1876–1880). Biography Karl Alfred von Zittel was born in Bahlingen in the Grand Duchy ...

) – Contributions to geology and paleontology of the

Libyan Desert The Libyan Desert (not to be confused with the Libyan Sahara) is a geographical region filling the north-eastern Sahara Desert, from eastern Libya to the Western Desert of Egypt and far northwestern Sudan. On medieval maps, its use predates t ...

and neighboring areas of Egypt. * ''Studien über Fucoiden und Hieroglyphen'', 1895 – Studies on fucoides and hieroglyphs. * ''Über einen Versuch die problematische Gattung Palaeodictyon auf mechanischem Wege künstlich herzustellen'', 1905 – On an attempt to artificially produce tunnels formed by the problematic genus Paleodictyon. * ''Wissenschaft und religion. Eine naturwissenschaftlich-philosophische studie'', 1911 – Science and religion. A scientific and philosophical study. He was a proponent of

Esperanto Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...

; in 1912 he translated the introductory chapter of Eduard Suess's ''Das Antlitz der Erde'' ("The face of the Earth") as ''La vizaĝo de la tero''.El "La vizaĝo de la tero" esperantigis Theodor Fuchs
HathiTrust

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fuchs, Theodor 1842 births 1925 deaths People from Prešov University of Vienna alumni Academics of the University of Vienna Austrian paleontologists 19th-century Austrian geologists 20th-century Austrian geologists