Ihering, Hermann Friedrich Albrecht von b. October 9, 1850; Kiel, Holstein d. February 24, 1930; Budingen, Hesse
German physician and naturalist who conducted outstanding research into the zoology of Brazil. He was the son of a lawyer who was raised to the nobility in 1872. After he received his doctorate in medicine in 1873 from the University of Gottingen, he continued his scientific studies at the University of Erlangen, where he obtained his PhD in 1876 and his second doctoral degree (Habilitation) in the same year.
In 1880 Hermann von Ihering went to Brazil and settled down as a physician in Taquara do Mundo Novo in Rio Grande do Sul. In the following years he undertook expeditions inside Brazil and, starting in 1883, he organized expeditions on behalf of the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. He started zoological—mainly ornithological—collections that went, among other places, to the British Museum in London. In 1887 he moved to Sao Paulo to undertake the construction of a government museum (Museu Paulista). In 1893 he was named director of this museum, which he had developed from its smallest beginnings into a significant collection. He added a botanical garden and established a biological station in Alto da Serra. Although a Brazilian citizen and a tenured civil servant, due to anti-German feelings during World War I, he was dismissed in 1916 with no salary claims. After the construction of a natural history museum in Floria- nopolis failed, he returned to Germany in 1920 and worked several more years as a titular professor of zoology and paleontology at the University of Gieβen.Ihering’s scientific importance lay primarily in the field of zoogeography, in which he was known worldwide for his pioneering work. He compiled systematic lists of bird life for the Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Sao Paulo. Numerous other publications dealt with mollusks, mammals, amphibians, insects, and other classes of animals. Over one hundred animal species and five genera bear his name. He summarized his research on the paleo- geographical question of the former landsea distribution since the Upper Cretaceous period on the basis of zoogeographical findings in his late work Die Geschichte des Atlantischen Ozeans (The History of the Atlantic Ocean, 1927).
Heinz Peter Brogiato
See also Brazil
References and Further Reading
Festschrift fur Prof. Dr. Hermann von Ihering. Phoenix. Zeitschrift fur deutsche Geistesarbeit in Sudamerika 13, nos. 1, 2 (1927): 1-75.
Parodiz, Juan J. “The Taxa of Fossil Mollusca Introduced by Hermann von Ihering.” Annals of Carnegie Museum 65, no. 3 (1996): 183-321.
Uschmann, Georg. “Ihering, Hermann v.” In Neue Deutsche Biographie. Vol. 10. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1974, p. 123.