Georg August Goldfuss Protozoa Infusoria Monades

Georg August Goldfuss (Goldfuß, 18 April 1782 – 2 October 1848) was a German

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

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 kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and d ...

and botanist. Goldfuss was born at Thurnau near Bayreuth. He was educated at

Erlangen Erlangen (; East Franconian: ''Erlang'', Bavarian: ''Erlanga'') is a Middle Franconian city in Bavaria, Germany. It is the seat of the administrative district Erlangen-Höchstadt (former administrative district Erlangen), and with 116,062 inhab ...

, where he graduated PhD in 1804 and became professor of zoology in 1818. He was subsequently appointed professor of zoology and mineralogy at the

University of Bonn The Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (german: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn) is a public research university located in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the ( en, Rhine ...

. Aided by Count Georg zu Münster, he issued the important (1826–44), a work which was intended to illustrate the

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

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 preserved ...

s of Germany, but it was left incomplete after the sponges,

coral Corals are marine invertebrates within the class Anthozoa of the phylum Cnidaria. They typically form compact colonies of many identical individual polyps. Coral species include the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and ...

crinoid Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids, which are ...

echinoderm An echinoderm () is any member of the phylum Echinodermata (). The adults are recognisable by their (usually five-point) radial symmetry, and include starfish, brittle stars, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, as well as the s ...

s and part of the mollusca had been figured. A collection of Goldfuss' botanical specimens are housed at Bonn University. Goldfuss died in

Bonn The federal city of Bonn ( lat, Bonna) is a city on the banks of the Rhine in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, with a population of over 300,000. About south-southeast of Cologne, Bonn is in the southernmost part of the Rhine-Ru ...

. In 1820, he coined the word '' protozoa'' to refer to single-celled organisms such as

ciliate The ciliates are a group of alveolates characterized by the presence of hair-like organelles called cilia, which are identical in structure to eukaryotic flagella, but are in general shorter and present in much larger numbers, with a differen ...

References

Attribution: *

Literature

* * Wolfhart Langer: ''Georg August Goldfuß - Ein biographischer Beitrag'' in: Bonner Geschichtsblätter, Band 23/1969, S. 229-243

External links

* 1782 births 1848 deaths German mineralogists German paleontologists 19th-century German zoologists People from the Principality of Bayreuth University of Erlangen-Nuremberg alumni University of Erlangen-Nuremberg faculty University of Bonn faculty {{Germany-botanist-stub