Count Georg Ludwig Friedrich Wilhelm zu Münster (; 17 February 1776 – 23 December 1844) was a German
paleontologist
Paleontology, also spelled as palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of the life of the past, mainly but not exclusively through the study of fossils. Paleontologists use fossils as a means to classify organisms, measure geolo ...
.
Biography
Münster was born on 17 February 1776 in Langelage, near
Osnabrück
Osnabrück (; ; archaic English: ''Osnaburg'') is a city in Lower Saxony in western Germany. It is situated on the river Hase in a valley penned between the Wiehen Hills and the northern tip of the Teutoburg Forest. With a population of 168 ...
. In 1800, he reportedly became a
Prussian
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, the House of Hohenzoll ...
official in the principalities of
Brandenburg-Ansbach
The Principality or Margraviate of (Brandenburg) Ansbach ( or ) was a principality in the Holy Roman Empire centered on the Franconian city of Ansbach. The ruling Hohenzollern princes of the land were known as margraves, as their ancestors were ...
and
Brandenburg-Bayreuth. He assembled a renowned
fossil
A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...
collection, which was eventually acquired by the
Bavarian state and became the foundation of the palaeontological museum in
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
.
Münster assisted
Georg August Goldfuss
Georg August Goldfuß (18 April 1782 – 2 October 1848) was a German palaeontologist, zoologist and botanist. He became a professor of zoology at the University of Erlangen and later at the University of Bonn. He coined the terms "protozoa" an ...
in writing his great work, ''Petrefacta Germaniae''.
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz ( ; ) FRS (For) FRSE (May 28, 1807 – December 14, 1873) was a Swiss-born American biologist and geologist who is recognized as a scholar of Earth's natural history.
Spending his early life in Switzerland, he recei ...
and
Georges Cuvier
Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, baron Cuvier (23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier (; ), was a French natural history, naturalist and zoology, zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuv ...
are said to have visited him at
Bayreuth
Bayreuth ( or ; High Franconian German, Upper Franconian: Bareid, ) is a Town#Germany, town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtel Mountains. The town's roots date back to 11 ...
, where he reportedly donated part of his collection to them. He died in Bayreuth on 23 December 1844.
The
Graf-Münster-Gymnasium in Bayreuth, the city's largest school , was founded in 1833
''Festschrift 175 Jahre Königliche Kreis-, Landwirtschafts- und Gewerbeschule, Realschule, Oberrealschule, Graf-Münster-Gymnasium Bayreuth'' (table of contents only)
/ref> and named in his honour.
References
Notes
*
Further reading
*
*
External links
* https://web.archive.org/web/20100117150328/http://www.barnick.de/bt/wer/grafmuenster.htm
* http://did.mat.uni-bayreuth.de/~gmg/info/muenster/muenster.html
* http://fossilien-news.blog.de/?tag=georg-graf-zu-m%FCnster
1776 births
1844 deaths
Counts in Germany
German paleontologists
Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath
Scientists from Osnabrück
{{Germany-scientist-stub