Otto Kraus (17 May 1930 – 24 October 2017) was a German

arachnologist Arachnology is the scientific study of arachnids, which comprise spiders and related invertebrates such as scorpions, pseudoscorpions, and harvestmen. Those who study spiders and other arachnids are arachnologists. More narrowly, the study of sp ...

and myriapodologist. He was director of the Zoological Institute and Zoological Museum at the

University of Hamburg The University of Hamburg (german: link=no, Universität Hamburg, also referred to as UHH) is a public research university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919 by combining the previous General Lecture System ('' Allgemeines Vo ...

from 1969 to 1995, where he also served as professor. He was a commissioner (1963–1995) and president (1989–1995) of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN). He published nearly 200 scientific papers and described nearly 500 species of myriapods and over 80 species of spiders. His works include contributions to the encyclopedia '' Grzimeks Tierleben'' and the German translation of

Ernst Mayr Ernst Walter Mayr (; 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005) was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned Taxonomy (biology), taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, Philosophy of biology, philosopher o ...

's ''Principles of Systematic Zoology''. Kraus was born in Frankfurt in 1930. While attending the University of Frankfurt he volunteered with the

Senckenberg Museum The Naturmuseum Senckenberg is a museum of natural history, located in Frankfurt am Main. It is the second-largest of its type in Germany. The museum contains a large and diverse collection of birds with 90,000 bird skins, 5,050 egg sets, 17,0 ...

, where he wrote his doctoral thesis on spiders and myriapods from El Salvador, supervised by Robert Mertens. He completed his Ph.D. in 1955 and was hired by the museum the same year, later becoming head of the arachnology section and from 1963 to 1969 was head of the invertebrate zoology section. Kraus is commemorated in the scientific names of more than a dozen species of spiders, millipedes, and centipedes named in his honor.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kraus, Otto 1930 births 2017 deaths 20th-century German zoologists German arachnologists Myriapodologists University of Hamburg faculty Goethe University Frankfurt alumni Scientists from Frankfurt