Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (4 February 1776,

Bremen Bremen (Low German also: ''Breem'' or ''Bräm''), officially the City Municipality of Bremen (german: Stadtgemeinde Bremen, ), is the capital of the German state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (''Freie Hansestadt Bremen''), a two-city-state consis ...

– 16 February 1837, Bremen) was a German

physician A physician (American English), medical practitioner (Commonwealth English), medical doctor, or simply doctor, is a health professional who practices medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring health through th ...

, naturalist, and proto-evolutionary biologist. His younger brother,

Ludolph Christian Treviranus Ludolph Christian Treviranus (18 September 1779 in Bremen – 6 May 1864 in Bonn) was a German botanist born in Bremen. He was a younger brother to naturalist Gottfried Reinhold Treviranus (1776–1837). In 1801 he earned his doctorate at th ...

(1779–1864), was also a naturalist and botanist, and also a notable

taxonomist In biology, taxonomy () is the scientific study of naming, defining ( circumscribing) and classifying groups of biological organisms based on shared characteristics. Organisms are grouped into taxa (singular: taxon) and these groups are given ...

and

zoologist Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

History

Treviranus was born in

and studied

medicine Medicine is the science and practice of caring for a patient, managing the diagnosis, prognosis, prevention, treatment, palliation of their injury or disease, and promoting their health. Medicine encompasses a variety of health care pract ...

at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

, where he took his doctor's degree in 1796. During the following year, he was appointed professor of medicine and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

at the Bremen lyceum. In 1816, he was elected a corresponding member of the

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences ( sv, Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien) is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, royal academies of Sweden. Founded on 2 June 1739, it is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization that takes special ...

Works

Treviranus was a proponent of the theory of the

transmutation of species Transmutation of species and transformism are unproven 18th and 19th-century evolutionary ideas about the change of one species into another that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection. The French ''Transformisme'' was a term used ...

, a theory of

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

held by some biologists prior to the work of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

. He put forward this belief in the first volume of his ''Biologie; oder die Philosophie der lebenden Natur'', published in 1802, the same year similar opinions were expressed by

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1 August 1744 – 18 December 1829), often known simply as Lamarck (; ), was a French naturalist, biologist, academic, and soldier. He was an early proponent of the idea that biologi ...

. In the 1830s, he was the first to identify rod

photoreceptor cell A photoreceptor cell is a specialized type of neuroepithelial cell found in the retina that is capable of visual phototransduction. The great biological importance of photoreceptors is that they convert light (visible electromagnetic radiatio ...

s in the

retina The retina (from la, rete "net") is the innermost, light-sensitive layer of tissue of the eye of most vertebrates and some molluscs. The optics of the eye create a focused two-dimensional image of the visual world on the retina, which then ...

using a microscope.

Selected writings

* ''Biologie; oder die Philosophie der lebenden Natur für Naturforscher und Aerzte'', (1802–22). * ''Beiträge zur Lehre von den Gesichtswerkzeugen und dem Sehen des Menschen und der Thiere'', (1828). * ''Beiträge zur Aufklärung der Erscheinungen und Gesetze des organischen Lebens'' (with Ludolph Christian Treviranus), (1835–38).WorldCat Search
(publications)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Treviranus, Gottfried Reinhold Proto-evolutionary biologists 1776 births 1837 deaths German naturalists Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Physicians from Bremen 19th-century German biologists 19th-century German botanists 19th-century German physicians Scientists from Bremen