Adolf Bernhard Meyer

author

Adolf Bernhard Meyer

1840–1911

A restless 19th-century naturalist, he moved easily between anthropology and zoology and helped shape museum science in Dresden. His work also helped bring early evolutionary ideas to German readers through a translation of the landmark Darwin and Wallace papers.

1 Audiobook

Säugethiere vom Celebes- und Philippinen-Archipel

Säugethiere vom Celebes- und Philippinen-Archipel

by Adolf Bernhard Meyer

About the author

Born in Hamburg on 11 October 1840, Adolf Bernhard Meyer was a German anthropologist, ornithologist, entomologist, and herpetologist. He studied at several universities, including Göttingen, Vienna, Zürich, and Berlin, and built a career that crossed medicine, natural history, and ethnography.

Meyer is especially remembered for his long service in Dresden, where he directed the Königliches Zoologisches und Anthropologisch-Ethnographisches Museum for nearly thirty years. He carried out research in comparative anatomy and produced important zoological work, including studies of birds from Celebes and nearby islands.

He also played a part in the spread of evolutionary thought in Germany by translating into German the 1858 papers by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace that first set out natural selection. He died in 1911, and remains a notable figure in the intertwined histories of museums, anthropology, and zoology.