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Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann (December 7, 1770 in Brunswick – December 31, 1840 in Kiel), was a German physician, historian, naturalist and entomologist. He is best known for his studies of world Diptera, but he also studied Hymenoptera and Coleoptera, although far less expertly. ==Biography== Wiedemann’s father, Conrad Eberhard Wiedemann (1722–1804) was an art dealer and his mother, Dorothea Frederike (née Raspe) (1741–1804) was the daughter of an accountant in the Royal Mining Service and also interested in the arts. After his education in Brunswick, he matriculated in 1790 to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Jena where he was a contemporary of the poet Friedrich von Hardenberg. While attending university, Wiedemann, was one of the many pupils of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and travelled to Saxony and Bohemia. He obtained his doctoral degree in 1792 with a thesis entitled ''Dissertatio inauguralis sistens vitia gennus humanum debilitantia''. He then went to England to increase his knowledge of mineralogy. Appointed Professor of Anatomy at Brunswick’s Collegium Carolinum in 1794, his inaugural address was about a medical condition observed in a boy at ,Llandeilo, Wales. It was titled ''Über das fehlende Brustbein'', English “On the missing breastbone”. In 1796 he married Luise Michaelis, the daughter of Johann David Michaelis, an Orientalist. They would raise the two sons of Luise's brother, who died in a cholera epidemic. The couple had nine children of their own, two dying in infancy. He was later appointed Lecturer in his specialist field obstetrics In the late 17th century, there was a movement, based in Brunswick, to establish German as a scientific language. Able to read Latin, English, French and Italian, Wiedemann found remunerative work as a translator. In 1801 he received a scholarship for study in Paris from the Duke of Brunswick. Here he studied obstetrics and natural history and met Georges Cuvier, amongst other zoologists. In 1802, he was, in addition to his other medical appointments, made Professor of Obstetrics at the College of Anatomy and Surgery and was nominated Privy Councillor at the court of the Duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg. In 1804 he contracted syphilis which had serious effects in later years. In 1805 he became Professor of Medicine in Kiel (then in Denmark and part of the Duchy of Holstein) with the title Counsellor of Justice and, later Counsellor of State. These were difficult years for Denmark which had sided with France in the Napoleonic Wars against England (and her allies) to preserve her maritime empire. Money was a problem and Wiedemann used his own resources to set up the midwifery clinic proposed as one of his duties as professor. In 1811 he travelled south to Italy for his health. From around 1814 Wiedemann devoted much of his time to taxonomic entomology and in 1815, on a visit to Bonn to stay with his daughter Emma who had married Carl Theodor Welcker later a radical embroiled in the turbulent poloitics of the 1840s he travelled to Stolberg to meet Johann Wilhelm Meigen a, by then, well known entomologist through his important work on Diptera. Perhaps, not able to attend properly to his medical duties through ill health- he visited the spa town of Bad Aachen in 1817- Wiedemann changed employment (to Pharmacology) and had several semi-honorary positions. With more time and sedentary, he prepared and studied insects and went on collecting trips for his health. He also gaves lectures on entomology And natural history. Wiedemann’s most productive work on insects was accomplished in the 1820s. But when he attended a scientific meeting in Hamburg in 1830 this too was drawing to a close. His eyesight was very poor and he had a succession of strokes. Wiedemann main natural history interest remained entomology but he was also interested in mineralogy and conchology. In 1827 his collections included 5,000 minerals and over 3,500 species of Diptera. He is known to have visited Hamburg, Copenhagen and Berlin in these years but nothing is so far known of these trips although they may well have been to further his insect studies. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Christian Rudolph Wilhelm Wiedemann」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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