Heinrich Georg Bronn

Heinrich Georg Bronn (3 March 1800 – 5 July 1862) was a German geologist and paleontologist. He was the first to translate Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species into German in 1860, although not without introducing his own interpretations, as also a chapter critiquing the work. Bronn was born at Ziegelhausen (now part of Heidelberg) in the electoral Palatinate. Studying at the university of Heidelberg he took his doctor's degree in the faculty of medicine in 1821, and in the following year was appointed professor of natural history. He now devoted himself to palaeontological studies, and to field-work in various parts of Germany, Italy and France. From its commencement in 1830 to 1862 he assisted in editing the Jahrbuch für Mineralogie continued as Neues Jahrbuch. His principal work, Letkaea Geognostica (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1834–1838; 3rd ed. with F. Romer, 3 vols., 1851–1856), has been regarded as one of the foundations of German stratigraphical geology. His Handbuch einer Geschichte der Natur, of which the first part was issued in 1841, gave a general account of the physical history of the earth, while the second part dealt with the life-history, species being regarded as direct acts of creation. The third part included his Index Palaeontologicus, and was issued in 3 vols., 1848–1849, with the assistance of Hermann von Meyer and Heinrich Göppert. This record of fossils has proved of inestimable value to all palaeontologists. Bronn's quantitative analysis of the appearance of specific fossils revealed that particular species, such as the ammonites, appeared and disappeared at different times in the fossil record. An important work on recent and fossil zoology, Die Klassen und Ordnungen des Thier-Reichs, was commenced by Bronn. He wrote the volumes dealing with Amorphozoa, Actinozoa, and Malacozoa, published 1859–1862; the work was continued by other naturalists. Bronn was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1860. In 1861 Bronn was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London.