Fritz Römer

Hermann Fritz Joseph Roman ( born April 10, 1866 in Moers, † March 20, 1909 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German zoologist.

Life

Fritz Romans attended high school in Herford, which he successfully completed in 1888. Subsequently, he did his military service as a one-year volunteer and began in 1889 at the University of Jena a study of the natural sciences with a focus on zoology. After he had obtained his doctorate at work over the construction and development of the carapace of armadillos, he was on October 1, 1892 Ernst Haeckel's assistant at the Zoological Institute of the University of Jena. Haeckel described it later as the "best, most efficient and most conscientious of all wizards " that he had ever had. Romans dealt in Jena predominantly in the skin and hair formation in vertebrates.

On April 21, 1898, he joined as an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Berlin, where he oversaw the crustacean collection. In the summer of 1898 Romans undertook with Fritz Schaudinn a scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean on the chartered for this purpose trawler Helgoland. The Helgoland expedition was initially planned by the head of Theodor Lerner as a hunting trip, got through the participation of the two zoologists but a scientific character. It was possible to circumnavigate Spitsbergen and reach King Karl Land. The rich zoological yield gave rise to the publication of the Fauna Arctica, a summarized representation of the entire Arctic wildlife in six volumes. Romans themselves treated in the siphonophores ( Volume 2 ) and Ctenophora (Volume 3).

1899 brought Willy Kükenthal the able curator of the Zoological Institute of the University of Breslau, where the extensive collections of the Zoological Museum of reorganizing needed, however, already on November 1, 1900 Romans joined a newly created position as curator at the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main on. For the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, which planned the new building of the museum, he carried out the associated complete reorganization of their collections. With the opening of the new Senckenberg Museum in 1907 he became its scientific director.

Romans was married and had a daughter.

Writings (selection )

• Fritz Romans: About the construction and development of the carapace of armadillos. Inaugural Dissertation, Jena 1893
• Fritz Romans and Fritz Schaudinn (ed.): Fauna Arctica. A compilation of the arctic animal forms with special regard to the Spitsbergen area based on the results of the German expedition to the Arctic Ocean in 1898. 6 volumes, Gustav Fischer, Jena 1900-1933
• Fritz Romans: The siphonophores. ibid, Volume 2, 1901, pp. 169-184
• Fritz Romans: The ctenophores. ibid, Volume 3, 1903, pp. 65-90