Morten Thrane Brünnich was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 zoologist and mineralogist.

Brünnich was born in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, the son of a portrait

Portrait

thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...

 painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

. He studied oriental languages and theology

Theology

Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

, but soon became interested in natural history

Natural history

Natural history is the scientific research of plants or animals, leaning more towards observational rather than experimental methods of study, and encompasses more research published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the natural sciences, natural history is the systematic study...

. He contributed his observations of insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s to Erik Pontoppidan

Erik Pontoppidan

Erik Pontoppidan was a Danish author, bishop, historian and antiquary, born in Aarhus August 24, 1698; died in Copenhagen December 20, 1764. He was educated in Fredericia , after which he was a private tutor in Norway, and then studied in Holland, and in London and Oxford, England...

's Danske Atlas (1763-81). After being put in charge of the natural history collection of Christian Fleischer

Christian Fleischer

Christian Fleischer was a Danish civil servant in the naval administration.He was a son of Herman Reinhold Fleischer . His father died before he was born, but several of his uncles, including Baltzer Fleischer, had notable careers in Norway. Christian Fleischer was thus a granduncle of Palle Rømer...

 he became interested in ornithology

Ornithology

Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...

, and in 1764 he published Ornithologia Borealis, which included the details of many Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

n bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s, some described for the first time.

The publication of Ornithologia Borealis was aided by his insight in the collection.

Brünnich corresponded with many foreign naturalists including Linnaeus

Carolus Linnaeus

Carl Linnaeus , also known after his ennoblement as , was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist, who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of binomial nomenclature. He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, and is also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology...

, Peter Simon Pallas

Peter Simon Pallas

Peter Simon Pallas was a German zoologist and botanist who worked in Russia.- Life and work :Pallas was born in Berlin, the son of Professor of Surgery Simon Pallas. He studied with private tutors and took an interest in natural history, later attending the University of Halle and the University...

 and Thomas Pennant

Thomas Pennant

Thomas Pennant was a Welsh naturalist and antiquary.The Pennants were a Welsh gentry family from the parish of Whitford, Flintshire, who had built up a modest estate at Bychton by the seventeenth century...

. He published his Entomologia in 1764. He then embarked on a long tour of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, spending time studying the fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

 of the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

 and publishing his Ichthyologia Massiliensis on the subject in 1768.

On his return Brünnich took up the post of Lecturer in Natural History and Economy at Copenhagen University. Here he established a natural history museum and wrote a textbook for his students, the Zoologiae fundamenta.

Brünnich's Guillemot

Brünnich's Guillemot

The Thick-billed Murre or Brünnich's Guillemot is a bird in the auk family . This bird is named after the Danish zoologist Morten Thrane Brünnich...

is named after him.

Works

Partial list

• Prodromus insectologiæ Siælandicæ. Kopenhagen 1761.
• Die natürliche Historie des Eider-Vogels. Kopenhagen 1763.
• Eder-Fuglens Beskrivelse. Kopenhagen 1763.
• Tillæg til Eder-Fuglens Beskrivelse. Kopenhagen 1763.
• Entomologia. Godiche, Kopenhagen 1764.
• Ornithologia borealis. Kall & Godiche, Kopenhagen 1764.
• Ichthyologia Massiliensis. Roth & Proft, Kopenhagen, Leipzig 1768.
• Appendix to Cronstedt's Mineralogy. London 1772.
• Zoologiæ fundamenta praelectionibus academicis accommodata. Pelt, Kopenhagen 1771/72.
• Mineralogie. Simmelkiær & Logan, Kopenhagen, St. Petersburg 1777-81.
• Dyrenes Historie og Dyre-Samlingen ud Universitetes Natur-Theater. Kopenhagen, 1782.
• Literatura Danica scientiarum naturalium. Kopenhagen, Leipzig 1783.
• Catalogus bibliothecæ historiæ naturalis. Kopenhagen 1793.
• Historiske Efterretninger om Norges Biergverker. Kopenhagen 1819.
• Kongsberg Sölvbergwerk i Norge. Kopenhagen 1826.