Heinrich Ernst Beyrich

Heinrich Ernst Beyrich ( born August 31, 1815 in Berlin, † July 9, 1896 in Berlin) was a German geologist and paleontologist.

Life

Heinrich Ernst Beyrich was a high school he was already at the age of 16 years at the high school Berlinischen to the Grey Abbey. At the beginning of his studies at the University of Berlin, he was unsure whether he should study botany, zoology or mineralogy. Under the influence of Christian Samuel Weiss, he chose the latter. In 1834 he went to Bonn to study paleontology and geology at August Goldfuß.

After graduating, he traveled for two years with his friend Julius Ewald (1811-1891) by Germany, France, Switzerland and northern Italy and in 1837 received his doctorate in Berlin with a thesis on the goniatites of the Rhenish Slate Mountains. The doctoral thesis was much respected and allowed Beyrich contact with Leopold von Buch, who broke up not to book death.

1841 Habilitation Beyrich a lecturer at the University of Berlin and was used for land survey commissioned by the Ministry of Commerce, Trade and Public Works ( the predecessor of the Reich Transport Ministry ) under the direction of Ernst Heinrich von Dechen. He was assigned as a coverage area, the previously geologically hardly noticed Silesia. After two years of work, he submitted his report, which had great influence on the reorganization of the Silesian mining districts.

In 1845 he was elected a member of the Scholars Academy Leopoldina. In 1848 he became an assistant at " Mineralogical Museum " and headed from 1857, the " Paleontological Collection". In the same year he initiated the establishment of the Geological Society. At the Mining Academy Berlin, he worked from 1857 as a lecturer, as an associate and in 1865 a full professor of geology and paleontology.

In 1866 he was commissioned to create the " Special Geological map of Prussia " in scale 1:25000 and was appointed the following year to the overall head of the Prussian geological mapping. With the task of creating the map, that could never be completed, he worked on until his death, so more than 34 years. In 1869 he was one of the founding members of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory, whose vice-chairman from 1877 to 1894, he was - in which he presided over the company with a one year break in 1884.

In 1873 he was first director of the Prussian Geological Survey, together with his former student William Hauchecorne. From 1881 he led on behalf of the International Geological Congress, the project of the Carte géologique international de l'Europe, which was published in 1893 and completed by Franz Beyschlag.

In 1875 he was appointed as Director of the United museums of Natural History.

Since 1847 Beyrich was married with children and youth writer Clementine helmet. The marriage remained childless.

Honors

1853 took him the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences of his outstanding scientific achievements as a full member on.

The Leopoldina Beyrich honored in 1890 with the Cothenius medal as a writer particularly important scientific work.

1895, a year before his death, he was made an honorary member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory.