Everything about Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg totally explained
Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (
April 19,
1795 –
June 27,
1876),
German naturalist,
zoologist,
comparative anatomist,
geologist, and
microscopist, was one of the most famous and productive
scientists of his time.
Early collections
The son of a judge, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg was born in
Delitzsch, near
Leipzig. He first studied
theology at the
University of Leipzig, then
medicine and
natural sciences in
Berlin and became a friend of the famous
explorer Alexander von Humboldt. In 1818, he completed his doctoral
dissertation on
fungi,
Sylvae mycologicae Berolinenses.
In 1820–1825, on a scientific expedition to the
Middle East with his friend
Wilhelm Hemprich, he collected thousands of specimens of
plants and
animals. He investigated parts of
Egypt, the
Libyan desert, the
Nile valley and the northern coasts of the
Red Sea, where he made a special study of the
corals. Subsequently parts of
Syria,
Arabia and
Abyssinia were examined. Some results of these travels and of the important collections that had been made were reported on by Humboldt in 1826.
After his return, Ehrenberg published several papers on
insects on
corals and two volumes
Symbelae physicae (1828–1834), in which many particulars of the
mammals,
birds,
insects, etc., were made public. Other observations were communicated to scientific societies.
Focus on microscopic organisms
Ehrenberg was appointed professor of
medicine at Berlin University in 1827. In 1829 he accompanied Humboldt through eastern
Russia to the
Chinese frontier. After his return he began to concentrate his studies on microscopic organisms, which until then hadn't been systematically studied.
For nearly 30 years Ehrenberg examined samples of water, soil, sediment, blowing dust and rock and described thousands of new
species, among them well-known
flagellates such as
Euglena,
ciliates such as
Paramecium aurelia and
Paramecium caudatum, and many
fossils, in nearly 400 scientific publications. He was particularly interested in a unicellular group of
protists called
diatoms, but he also studied, and named, many species of
radiolaria.
These researches had an important bearing on some of the infusorial earths used for polishing and other economic purposes; they added, moreover, largely to our knowledge of the
microorganisms of certain
geological formations, especially of the
chalk, and of the marine and freshwater accumulations. Until Ehrenberg took up the study it wasn't known that considerable masses of
rock were composed of minute forms of animals or plants. He also demonstrated that the
phosphorescence of the sea was due to organisms.
He was a foreign member of the
Royal Society of
London from 1837. In 1839, he won the
Wollaston Medal, the highest award granted by the
Geological Society of London. He continued until late in life to investigate the microscopic organisms of the deep sea and of various geological formations. He died in
Berlin on
June 27,
1876.
Legacy
After his death in 1876, his collections of
microscopic organisms were deposited in the
Museum für Naturkunde at the
University of Berlin. The "Ehrenberg Collection" includes 40,000 microscope preparations, 5,000 raw samples, 3,000 pencil and ink drawings, and nearly 1,000 letters of correspondence.
He was also the first winner of the
Leeuwenhoek Medal in 1877.
In his hometown, Delitzsch, the highest A-Level school, the "Ehrenberg-Gymnasium" is named after him. The best student of the school year receives the Ehrenberg Prize and a scholarship.
Publications
- The Ehrenberg Collection (including plates from Mikrogeologie, 1854) is available for download from Museum für Naturkunde, Humboldt-Universität (External Link
)
- Die Infusionsthierchen als vollkommene Organismen (2 vols., Leipzig, 1838)
- Mikrogeologie (2 vols., Leipzig, 1854)
- "Fortsetzung der mikrogeologischen Studien", in Abhandlungen der königlichen Akadademie der Wissenschaft (Berlin, 1875).
Further Information
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