The Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn is a research institute

Research institute

A research institute is an establishment endowed for doing research. Research institutes may specialize in basic research or may be oriented to applied research...

 in Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

, Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, devoted to basic research in biology. Research is largely interdisciplinary involving the fields of evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

, biochemistry

Biochemistry

Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...

, molecular biology

Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...

, neurobiology, cell biology

Cell biology

Cell biology is a scientific discipline that studies cells – their physiological properties, their structure, the organelles they contain, interactions with their environment, their life cycle, division and death. This is done both on a microscopic and molecular level...

, biological oceanography, marine botany

Marine botany

Marine botany is the study of plants that live in the sea and brackish water. It is a branch of marine biology....

, molecular plant biology, benthic ecology, and ecophysiology

Ecophysiology

Ecophysiology or environmental physiology is a biological discipline which studies the adaptation of organism's physiology to environmental conditions...

.

Founded in 1872 as a private concern by Anton Dohrn

Anton Dohrn

Felix Anton Dohrn was a prominent German Darwinist and the founder and first director of the Stazione Zoologica, Naples, Italy.-Family history:...

, in 1982 the Stazione Zoologica came under the supervision and control of the Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (Ministry of Universities and Scientific and Technological Research) as a National Institute.

People associated with SZN

• Raphael Weldon, who visited in summer 1882, working on Lacerta muralis, the common wall lizard
  Wall lizard
  The common wall lizard is a species of lizard with a large distribution in Europe and well-established introduced populations in North America, where it is also called the European wall lizard. It can grow to about in total length.-Identification:The common wall lizard is a small, thin lizard...
  
  , and then later (on his honeymoon) in spring 1883. Pearson's
  Karl Pearson
  Karl Pearson FRS was an influential English mathematician who has been credited for establishing the disciplineof mathematical statistics....
  
   obituary of Weldon (p.10) reports that "At Easter (1884) Banyuls was visited, and the summer vacation found Weldon in Naples again for the three months preparing his fellowship dissertation (for Cambridge). In Naples the cholera had broken out, and the Weldons experienced not only difficulty in getting the precious dissertation back to England, but in returning themselves."
• F.M.Balfour (See Letter 9289 — Charles Darwin
  Charles Darwin
  Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
  
   to F.A. Dohrn 13 Feb 1874: "F. M. Balfour to visit Naples").http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwin/search/advanced?query=subject:%22%3Csocial%3E+birthday+greetings%22
• Jerome Y. Lettvin Researched octopus visual neurophysiology in the summers of 1959, 1961, and 1963.

External links

• Homepage of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
• History of the Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn
• BHL Guide to the aquarium of the Zoological station at Naples. Leipzig :Breitkopf & Härtel,1896.