Otto Zacharias

Otto Zacharias ( born January 27, 1846 in Leipzig, † October 2, 1916 in Kiel, full name Emil Otto Zacharias ) was a German zoologist, plankton researcher and journalist.

Life

Otto Zacharias studied in Leipzig, among others, mathematics, philosophy, and zoology. He received his doctorate in 1869 for Dr. Phil with a dissertation about some metaphysical differences between Herbart and Kant Subsequently he worked as a private scholar in Italy. For many years he worked as a journalist, where he mainly devoted himself to the popular science communicating complex topics in biology. For this, he corresponded for a long time with leading scientists and writers in Prussia and other European and non-European countries. Among them: Ernst Haeckel, Charles Darwin, Rudolf Virchow, Wilhelm Joseph furrier and Bölsche. On April 1, 1892 Zacharias was able to open the first " Biological Station " for freshwater research on German soil as a private research institute, with financial support of the Prussian government and several private people at Great Plön Lake. Inspiration for this was founded in 1870 by Felix Anton Dohrn and already highly recognized at the time Zoological Station of Naples. Today the building is used in the Eutiner street from the restaurant 4 Old Ferry and Plön Seglerverein.

As director Zacharias informed from 1893 onwards in the research reports that were called from 1905 Archive of Hydrobiology and plankton customer, on the activities of Plön station. In so-called " Summer Courses " Zacharias trained teachers, and lay people interested in working with a microscope.

The station was later conducted from August Thienemann. No longer in the historic building, but in Plön is the successor of the Max Planck Institute for Limnology, which was renamed in April 2007 in the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, still (2008) resides.

Works (selection)

  • Charles Darwin and the cultural and historical significance of his theory of the origin of species. Berlin 1882.
  • The lower animal world of our lakes. ET - Anst. and Dr. A.-G., Hamburg 1889 ( digitized )
  • About solved and unsolved problems of natural science. 2nd edition, Leipzig 1891.
  • Catechism of Darwinism. Leipzig 1891.
  • The fauna and flora of fresh water. 2 vols Leipzig 1891.
  • The plankton. Leipzig, 1907.
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