Wilhelm Dunker

Wilhelm Dunker, actually Wilhelm Bernhard Rudolph Hadrian Dunker, ( born February 21, 1809 in Eschwege, † March 13, 1885 in Marburg ) was a German geologist, paleontologist and zoologist.

Life

Wilhelm Dunker studied from 1830 to 1834 in Göttingen mountain and Metallurgy and was first employed after graduation as an intern in the office to mountain top churches. Soon after, he was appointed as a teacher for mineralogical studies at the newly founded Polytechnic School ( Higher Vocational School ) to Kassel. In 1854 he was appointed professor at the University of Marburg, where he taught until his death.

Dunker was known above all as one of the most important malacologists his time. He had a very extensive private collection of snails and mussels, which he constantly through exchange with other collectors (and probably buying ) enlarged. He maintained contacts with, among others, his contemporaries Rudolph Amandus Philippi, Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer, Hugh Cuming and John Albers. Through exchange, he also acquired numerous original copies and types of these authors. After his death Dunkers mollusc by the Prussian state was purchased, and, on the initiative of the curator Carl Eduard von Martens in the collections of the former Zoological Museum in Berlin, where she is today.

Wilhelm Dunker wrote a large number of scientific publications on the systematics of mollusks and described numerous new species. In 1846 he founded together with Hermann von Meyer, the magazine " Palaeontographica " which was published by two and still appeared until at least 1996.

He also dealt with paleontology, among other things he found in the coal mining industry of Upper churches the tooth of a predatory dinosaur, which was then described by the Berlin paleontologist Wilhelm Dames and Ernst Koken and after Dunker named ( Megalosaurus dunkeri ). Dunker self-published his dinosaur finds in the program of the Higher Commercial School Kassel 1843/44 and in the monograph of the North German Wealdenbildung 1846.

Writings

Paleontological work:

Zoological work: