Robert Lauterborn (23 October 1869 - 11 September 1952) was a German botanist, limnologist and protozoologist. Lauterborn was born in Ludwigshafen where his father was a publisher. His mother died when he was two and he was taken care of by his aunt Pauline while his father married his mother's sister. Robert went to the local school and then studied at Mannheim, leaving school in 1889 with an

Abitur ''Abitur'' (), often shortened colloquially to ''Abi'', is a qualification granted at the end of secondary education in Germany. It is conferred on students who pass their final exams at the end of ISCED 3, usually after twelve or thirteen year ...

. He then studied zoology and botany in Heidelberg and graduated ''Dr. phil. nat.'' in 1897. He later became a professor in Karlsruhe. Lauterborn worked on river ecology and the biology of wastewater. His Ph.D. work was on dinoflagellates (esp. ''Ceratium hirundinella''). He later conducted large scale studies on the limnology of the Rhine waters. He also transcribed and published the work of the Strasbourg fisherman-naturalist

Leonhard Baldner Leonhard Baldner or Leonard Baltner (1612 – 1 February 1694) was a Strasbourg fisherman and naturalist who produced a hand-written illustrated book on the fishes, birds, and mammals titled ''Vogel-, Fisch- und Thierbuch''. Only six manuscript cop ...

who had also conducted studies on the Rhine in the 1600s. He described the genus ''

Paulinella ''Paulinella'' is a genus of at least eleven species including both freshwater and marine amoeboids. Its most famous members are the three photosynthetic species ''P. chromatophora'', ''P. micropora'' and ''P. longichromatophora'', the first tw ...

'' (named after his step-mother). Lauterborn influenced the work of his student

August Thienemann August Friedrich Thienemann (7 September 1882 in Gotha – 22 April 1960 in Plön) was a German limnologist, zoologist and ecologist. He studied zoology at the University of Greifswald. He was an associate Professor of Hydrobiology at the Univers ...

. The genus ''Lauterborniella'' (in the algae family) was named in his honour by Schmidle in 1900. The research vessel R/V ''Robert Lauterborn'' on Lake Constance is named after him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lauterborn, Robert 1869 births 1952 deaths German limnologists 19th-century German botanists 20th-century German botanists People from Ludwigshafen