Nils Peter Angelin (June 23, 1805 – February 13, 1876) was a Swedish paleontologist and professor at the

University of Lund Lund University () is a public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially founded in 1666 on the ...

from 1865. He was also curator of the paleontology at the National Museum in Stockholm.

Life and work

Angelin was born in Lund, the son of a blacksmith Tuve and Brita Kristina Risberg. He studied at Lund Cathedral School and went to the

but did not obtain any degree in the thirty six years he spent there. He attended lectures in law by Johan Holmbergsson, theology by Henrik Reuterdahl, botany from

Elias Fries Elias Magnus Fries (15 August 1794 – 8 February 1878) was a Swedish mycologist and botanist. He is sometimes called the "Linnaeus of Mycology". In his works he described and assigned botanical names to hundreds of fungus and lichen sp ...

and natural history under Sven Nilsson although he did not get along well with Nilsson. Angelin collected fossils from Norway and Sweden and described numerous species from 1839. On his travels he was able to meet Joachim Barrande and Ferdinand Roemer. On the latter's recommendation he received an honorary doctorate from Breslau in 1857. He became a docent at the University of Lund and later became an adjunct. Angelin earned money through sales of fossils and second-hand books. Jacob Berzelius once expressed his displeasure about the loss of valuable Swedish fossils to foreign countries. Angelin hired the illustrator and lithographer Magnus Körner to produce an illustrated work on the paleontology of Sweden. He initially called it ''Palæontologia Svecica'' (1851) but later changed the title to ''Palæontologia Scandinavica'' (1854). In 1861 he was elected to the Royal Geographic Society of Sweden. His collections were obtained by the National Museum in 1864 for an annual payment of 2000 Swedish kronors. He produced a geological map of Scania in 1865. Angelin was among the first to note sexual dimorphism in

ostracods Ostracods, or ostracodes, are a class of the Crustacea (class Ostracoda), sometimes known as seed shrimp. Some 33,000 species (only 13,000 of which are extant) have been identified,Brandão, S.N.; Antonietto, L.S; Nery, D.G.; Santos, S.G.; Karano ...

of the ''Beyrichia'' group. He was made a professor at the Royal Academy of Sciences in the same year. After his death, a work on

crinoids Crinoids are marine invertebrates that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that remain attached to the sea floor by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms, called feather stars or comatulids, are ...

, ''Iconographia crinoideorum'' (1878) and ''Fragmenta silurica'' (1880) was published by his successor Gustaf Lindström. In 1920 the Swedish Academy of Sciences produced a commemorative medal of Angelin with a trilobite and a Latin motto "Arcana Marium Priscorum Detexit" "he discovered the secrets of the ancient seas"

References

External links

Index to N.P. Angelin's Palæontologia scandinavica
(1910)
Fragmenta silurica e dono Caroli Henrici Wegelin
(1880) * Paleontologia Scandinavica (1878) * Iconographica crinoideorum (1878) {{DEFAULTSORT:Angelin, Nils Peter 1805 births 1876 deaths Swedish paleontologists People from Lund