Paul Sarasin

Paul Benedict Sarasin ( born December 11, 1856 in Basel, † April 7, 1929 ) was a Swiss naturalist. He is considered the founder of the Swiss National Park.

Life

Sarasin graduated from the primary and secondary school in Basel and then studied medicine at the University of Basel. After the first preparatory course he moved to Würzburg to the Institute of Zoology professor Karl Semper. There he devoted himself to zoological studies and received his doctorate in 1882 with a dissertation on the history of water snail Bithynia tentaculata.

From 1883 to 1886, Paul Sarasin went with his nephew Felix Speiser and his cousin Fritz Sarasin on a trip to British Ceylon to drive zoological and anthropological fieldwork. From 1893 to 1896 they went to Celebes. Since they made geographical and geological work in a largely unexplored area. After that, the two researchers allowed again in 1896 settled in Basel. The results of this and a second expedition 1902-1903 were published in a five -volume work. In 1907 she made ​​another trip to Ceylon.

1906 was established at the annual meeting of the Swiss Society of Natural Sciences in St. Gallen, a conservation commission. Sarasin was President of the Commission. At the International Congress of Zoologists in Graz in 1910, he wore the first time the idea of ​​a " World Conservation ". Sarasin could move the Swiss Federal Council to invite to an International Conference for the World Conservation in Bern, to which delegates from 17 "white" countries came. Sarasin was by the Conference Chairman of the Commission established only with very limited skills with headquarters in Basel. Also Sarasins requirement to include the protection of "primitive peoples " in the task field failed. The outbreak of the First World War threw the international nature conservation by decades, to the foundation of the IUCN in 1948, back.

Increasing health problems forced Paul Sarasin to retreat into private life. On April 7, 1929, he died at the age of 72 years of pneumonia.