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Oscar Theodor Baron (9 September 1847 – 7 September 1926) was a Silesian engineer, explorer and naturalist who collected insect and bird specimens around the world. The lepidopteran genus '' Baronia'' is named after him as are several other species from his collections.
Baron was born in Rzepcze where his father was an elementary school teacher. He was educated at Neustadt and even as a thirteen-year-old he began to collect insects. He then went to work aboard ships to the orient and was shipwrecked off Java. He then made his way to the United States but suffered from scurvy. Reaching California, he began to work as an engineer. According to letters that he wrote to Henry Edwards, he was at Navarro in 1876 and in 1879 he moved to Mendocino. During his travels, he collected insects, sending specimens to Edwards, James Spencer Bailey (1830–1883), Edward Louis Graef (1842–1922),
Baron's collections of hummingbirds at NHM, Tring
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baron, Oscar Thedor 1847 births 1926 deaths Engineers from the Kingdom of Prussia German entomologists Natural history collectors Silesia
Biography
Baron was born in Rzepcze where his father was an elementary school teacher. He was educated at Neustadt and even as a thirteen-year-old he began to collect insects. He then went to work aboard ships to the orient and was shipwrecked off Java. He then made his way to the United States but suffered from scurvy. Reaching California, he began to work as an engineer. According to letters that he wrote to Henry Edwards, he was at Navarro in 1876 and in 1879 he moved to Mendocino. During his travels, he collected insects, sending specimens to Edwards, James Spencer Bailey (1830–1883), Edward Louis Graef (1842–1922), Ferdinand Heinrich Hermann Strecker Ferdinand Heinrich Herman Strecker (24 March 1836, in Philadelphia – 30 November 1901, in Reading, Pennsylvania) was an American entomologist specialising in butterflies and moths (Lepidoptera).
Strecker was born in Philadelphia to Ferdinand and ...
(1836–1901), Albert Koebele and Berthold Neumoegen (1845–1895). Between 1881 and 1893 he worked with Californian railroad companies. in 1884 he visited Germany and met Otto Staudinger. In 1889 he went on an expedition into South America visiting Guayaquil and Zamora. He collected 11,000 butterflies, 5,000 beetles, and 700 hummingbirds. He also visited Chimborazo before returning to work in California and making another trip to Germany in 1893. His collections of Californian lepidoptera were examined by Hans Hermann Behr. He also sent many of his collections to the California Academy of Sciences. About 1019 hummingbirds were bought from him by Walter Rothschild in 1893 for a sum of £615. Osbert Salvin named '' Metallura baroni'' and the genus '' Baronia'' in 1893 in his honour. Ernst Hartert
Ernst Johann Otto Hartert (29 October 1859 – 11 November 1933) was a widely published German ornithologist.
Life and career
Hartert was born in Hamburg, Germany on 29 October 1859. In July 1891, he married the illustrator Claudia Bernadine E ...
named ''Phaethornis baroni
The long-billed hermit (''Phaethornis longirostris'') is a bird in the family Trochilidae, the hummingbirds. It is found from central Mexico south through Central America, Colombia and Ecuador into Peru.
Taxonomy and systematics
It has often ...
'' in 1897 after him. Many other species and subspecies across insect and bird groups are named from his collections. He returned to Germany living as a beekeeper at Oberglogau until his death.
References
External links
Baron's collections of hummingbirds at NHM, Tring
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baron, Oscar Thedor 1847 births 1926 deaths Engineers from the Kingdom of Prussia German entomologists Natural history collectors Silesia