Science (journal)/Volume 5/No. 120/Carl Theodor Von Siebold

CARL THEODOR VON SIEBOLD.

The death of Carl Theodor Ernst von Siebold, the last survivor of three distinguished brothers, deprives Germany of one of her most honored men of science. His investigations had ceased, owing to illness and the

Carl Theodor Von Siebold

encroachments of age, some time before his head; but his career is a long record of discoveries. He was born a Würzburg, Feb. 16, 1804. His elder brother, Eduard Kaspar Jakob, was a prominent obstetrician, holding a professorship at Göttingen at the time of his death. His still older cousin, Philip Fraz (not a brother, as sometimes stated), became distinguished by his very successful scientific journeys in Japan and the Indian Archipelago. Carl Theodor, like Helmholz, and many another of the older German men of science, was educated as a physician, and began life with the practice of his profession, at first in a governmental post as a 'kreisphysikos' in Heilsberg for a year, next as director of the lying-in hospital at Dantzig. In 1840 he definitely entered upon a university career as professor of physiology at Erlangen; and, after several changes, he went to Munich in 1853, and there remained until his death, on the 7th of last April.

His original work has been almost entirely in the field of zoölogy, more especially in the domain of comparative anatomy. His manual of this last-mentioned science is a great masterpiece, a model of truthful and critical compilation, supported by numerous original observations. In this work an immense array of facts are properly co-ordinated, and the whole concisely presented. It is not too much to say of this publication, that it has never been surpassed as an adequate exposition of the contemporary knowledge of comparative anatomy. Siebold's own investigations have been very numerous. His researches on the development of the intestinal worms, and also those on parthenogenesis, opened new fields of thought and the first-mentioned were of great practical utility to mankind. His monograph on the fresh-water fishes of Europe is the standard authority on the subject. Together with Kölliker, he founded the famous Zeitachrift für wissenschaftliche zoologie, a journal of the very highest character. The museum at Munich, of which he had charge, is a beautiful monument to his scientific and judicious administration. Such, in brief, are the long-continued and successful labors of one of the most esteemed veterans of German science, of one whose work and influence have contributed much to give Germany of to-day the intellectual leadership of mankind.