Otto Friedrich Müller
Encyclopedia
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...
naturalist
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...
.
Biography
Müller was born in CopenhagenCopenhagen
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...
. He was educated for the church, became tutor to a young nobleman, and after several years' travel with him settled in Copenhagen in 1767, and married a lady of wealth.
His first important works, Fauna Insectorum Friedrichsdaliana (Leipsic, 1764), and Flora Friedrichsdaliana (Strasburg, 1767), recommended him to Frederick V of Denmark
Frederick V of Denmark
Frederick V was king of Denmark and Norway from 1746, son of Christian VI of Denmark and Sophia Magdalen of Brandenburg-Kulmbach.-Early life:...
, by whom he was employed to continue the Flora of Denmark, and he added two volumes to the three published by Oeder
Georg Christian Oeder
Georg Christian Edler von Oldenburg Oeder was a German-Danish botanist, medical doctor, economist and social reformer. His name is particularly associated with the initiation of the plate work Flora Danica.-Life and work:Oeder was the son of a Bavarian parish minister, Georg Ludwig Oeder...
since 1761. The study of zoölogy, and particularly of microorganisms, meanwhile began to occupy his attention almost exclusively, and in 1771 he produced a work in German on “Certain Worms inhabiting Fresh and Salt Water,” which described many new species of those annulose animals called by Linnaeus aphroditae and nereides, and gave much additional information respecting their habits.
In his Vermium Terrestrium et Fluviatilium, seu Animalium Infusoriorum, Helminthecorum, et Testaceorum non Marinorum, succincta Historia (2 vols. 4to, Copenhagen and Leipzig, l773-74), he arranged the Infusoria
Infusoria
Infusoria is a collective term for minute aquatic creatures like ciliates, euglenoids, protozoa, and unicellular algae that exist in freshwater ponds...
for the first time into genera and species. His Hydrachnæ in Aquis Daniæ Palustribus detectæ et descriptæ (Leipsic, 1781), and Entomostraca (1785), describe many species of microorganisms previously unknown. To these was added an illustrated work on the Infusoria, published in 1786. These three works, according to Cuvier, give the author “a place in the first rank of those naturalists who have enriched science with original observations.”
His Zoologiae Danicae Prodromus (1776) was the first survey of the fauna of Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Denmark, and classified over three thousand local species. He was one of the first to study microorganisms, and established the classification of several groups of animals in addition to the Infusoria, including Hydrachnellae and Entomostraca
Entomostraca
Entomostraca is a historical subclass of Crustacea, no longer in technical use. It was originally considered one of the two major lineages of crustaceans , combining all other classes – Branchiopoda, Cephalocarida, Ostracoda and Maxillopoda. The Ostracoda have the body enclosed in a bivalve...
, all unknown to 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...
.
He was a member of the Academia Caesarea Leopoldina, the Royal Scandinavian Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
, the Paris Academy of Sciences and the Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Science
Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Science
The Berlin Society of Friends of Natural Science, is a scientific society founded in 1773....
and had a lasting impact on zoological studies across 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...
.
In 1769, Müller was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...
.
Works
- Fauna Insectorum Fridrichsdaliana. Lipsiae: Hafniae et Gleditsch xxiv 96 pp. (1764).
- Vermium terrestrium et fluviatilium, seu animalium infusoriorum, helminthicorum, et testaecorum, non marinorum, succincta historia. Volumen alterum. pp. I-XXVI [= 1-36], 1-214, [1-10]. Havniæ & Lipsiæ. (Heineck & Faber). (1774)
- Zoologiae Danicae Prodromus, seu Animalium Daniae et Norvegiae Indigenarum characteres, nomina, et synonyma imprimis popularium.... Copenhagen, Hallager for the author. (1776) "... the first manual on this topic (Danish and Norwegian Zoology) and was for many years the most comprehensive. It was planned as the beginning of a large illustrated fauna, but only one volume appeared before Müller's death; the following volumes the last published in 1806 prepared by Søren AbildgaardSøren AbildgaardSøren Pedersen Abildgaard was a Danish naturalist, writer and illustrator. He was born in Flekkefjord in Norway and died in Copenhagen in Denmark....
and Martin Heinrich Rathke, amongst others, never reached the standard of the Flora Danica begun by Georg Christian OederGeorg Christian OederGeorg Christian Edler von Oldenburg Oeder was a German-Danish botanist, medical doctor, economist and social reformer. His name is particularly associated with the initiation of the plate work Flora Danica.-Life and work:Oeder was the son of a Bavarian parish minister, Georg Ludwig Oeder...
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External links
- http://dz-srv1.sub.uni-Goettingen.de/cache/browse/AuthorZoologicaMonograph,WorkContainedM1.html--Enumeratio ac Descriptio Libellularum agri Fridrichsdalensis and Favna insectorvm Fridrichsdalina at GDZ Göttigen (Search as Mueller)