Adolf Bernhard Meyer | |
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| Born | 11 October 1840  |
| Died | 5 February 1911 (aged 70) |
| Occupation | Zoologist, ethnologist, zoological collector, botanical collector |
| Spouse(s) | Wilhelmine Meyer |
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Adolf Bernhard Meyer (11 October 1840,Hamburg – 22 August 1911,Dresden) was a Germananthropologist,ornithologist,entomologist, andherpetologist. He served for nearly thirty years as director of the Königlich Zoologisches und Anthropologisch-Ethnographisches Museum (now the natural history museum orMuseum für Tierkunde Dresden) in Dresden. He worked on comparative anatomy and appreciated the ideas of evolution, and influenced many German scientists by translating into German the 1858 papers by Darwin and Wallace which first proposed evolution by natural selection. Influenced by the writings of Wallace with whom he interacted, he travelled to Southeast Asia, and collected specimens and recorded his observations from the region.
Meyer was born in a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg as Aron Baruch Meyer, and was educated at the universities ofGöttingen,Vienna,Zürich andBerlin. He became director of theAnthropological and Ethnographic Museum in Dresden in 1874 and continued in that position until his retirement in 1905. He studied medicine in Zurich and published a thesis on electrical stimulation of the nerves. In 1870 he translated the works of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace into German.[1][2] Enamoured by Wallace's travelogues, he travelled in theEast Indies at the end of the nineteenth century. He collected numerous specimens. Meyer's East Indies bird collection andbeetles andbutterflies collected inCelebes andNew Guinea are inStaatliches Museum für Tierkunde Dresden. The museum was destroyed during theAlliedbombing of Dresden, 13–15 February 1945, and many specimens were lost. In 1874 he succeeded Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach as director at the same museum. Among his inventions were the "Dresden Case" made of iron and glass that he designed to store specimens.[3] It is believed that he held the post until 1904 when anti-semitism led to his suspension. He was forced to resign in 1906 and his position was taken byArnold Jacobi.[4][5] He also studiedamphibians andreptiles, describing several newspecies oflizardsendemic toNew Guinea. In addition to birds he made a study on primates. He describedTarsius sangirensis, theSangihe tarsier, a small primate that he found in Indonesia in 1897. His knowledge of English allowed him to collaborate with many researchers such asL. W. Wiglesworth with whom he wroteThe Birds of Celebes and the Neighbouring Islands (1898). His two volume studies on the skeletons of birds was dedicated to ProfessorsMax Fürbringer andHenri Milne-Edwards.
Thebrown sicklebill (Epimachus meyeri) was named after him when the species was first recorded in 1884. He published a classification of birds and named and described several new species, among themQueen Carola's parotia (Parotia carolae),Princess Stephanie's astrapia (Astrapia stephaniae), thered-capped flowerpecker (Dicaeum geelvinkianum), and thetakahē (Notornis hochstetteri, nowPorphyrio hochstetteri ).
Meyer is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard,Typhlosaurus meyeri.[6]