Abstract
THE election of Prof. Max Carl Wilhelm Weber as a foreign member of the Royal Society gives well-deserved recognition to one whose influence on biological science is of outstanding importance. After earlier work on Crustacea, Prof. Weber soon entered upon his studies of fish, which were eventually to bring him into the front rank of ichthyologists of the day. His contributions to our knowledge of fish fauna have been very great and resulted from his personal travels into the far north, South Africa and the East Indian Archipelago. The fruits of his researches culminated in his comprehensive joint work with L. F. de Beaufort on “The Fishes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago” published in three volumes between 1911 and 1916. But to biologists in general, Max Weber is probably better known for his able leadership of the Dutch Siboga Expedition in 1899–1900. This expedition covered a distance of about 12,000 sea miles in the different basins of the East Indian Archipelago, and was equipped with the best oceanographical apparatus of the time. The reports of the Siboga Expedition edited by Max Weber form one of the major contributions to the science of oceanography, and have filled a large gap in our knowledge of the fauna of that region. Weber himself undertook the study of the fishes collected by the Siboga Expedition and published in 1913 his great volume, in which no less than 131 new species were described and 240 species recorded for the first time in the Indo-Australian Archipelago. This work he dedicated to his wife, Mme. Dr. A. A. Weber-van Bosse, who accompanied him on his travels and is herself a botanist of great distinction. Prof. Weber is also the author of the most comprehensive textbook on the Mammalia to be found in any language. The first edition of this work, “Die Saugetiere”, was published in 1904 in one volume; the second and latest edition, in two volumes, appeared in 1928. Taking a general view of the work, it is the most complete account in existence of the taxonomy and structure of mammals, living and fossil.
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Prof. Max Weber, For.Mem.R.S.. Nature 136, 14–15 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136014c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136014c0