Abstract
PROF. J. WILHELM MICHAELSEN, Hauptkuatos in the Hamburg Zoological Museum, died on February 18 in his seventy-seventh year. Born in Hamburg, he joined the Hamburg Museum in 1887 and worked there until the time of his death. As a young man he became interested in the Oligochseta, and from 1886 until his death he wrote many papers on their anatomy, classification and geographical distribution. He also wrote on the Tunicates and the Polychaeta, but his main interest was the Oligochaetes, and it would be difficult to over-estimate the extent of his contribution to our knowledge of this group. Vastly learned, disinterested and careful of minutiæ he belonged to the great tradition of German scholarship, and the sheer quantity of his work—his papers on the Oligochæta alone bind up into eight very bulky volumes—testifies to an extraordinary industry and persistence of motive. In addition to this, he found time to make journeys to the southernmost corners of America, Africa and Australia in pursuit of evidence to throw light on the palæogeographical problems arising out of his study of Oligochæte distribution.
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Prof. J. W. Michaelsen. Nature 140, 308–309 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140308a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140308a0