Herman Diedrich Spöring Sr. (or ''Spoering'') (1701–1747) was a professor of medicine at the

Royal Academy of Turku The Royal Academy of Turku or the Royal Academy of Åbo was the first university in Finland, and the only Finnish university that was founded when the country still was a part of Sweden. It was founded in 1640. In 1809, after Finland became a ...

Turku Turku ( ; ; , ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the Aura River (Finland), River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately , while t ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, and an amateur naturalist. One of his students was the Finnish scientist and priest

Pehr Kalm Pehr Kalm (6 March 1716 – 16 November 1779), also known as Peter Kalm, was a Swedish-Finnish List of explorers, explorer, botany, botanist, natural history, naturalist, and Agricultural economics, agricultural economist. He was one of the most ...

. Spöring was one of the earliest scientists to propose, in 1747 shortly before his death, of the link between fish and

tapeworms Cestoda is a class of parasitic worms in the flatworm phylum (Platyhelminthes). Most of the species—and the best-known—are those in the subclass Eucestoda; they are ribbon-like worms as adults, commonly known as tapeworms. Their bodies con ...

. His son Herman Diedrich Spöring Jr. (1733–1771), a Finnish

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

and

botanist Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

, was one of the scientific personnel who accompanied

James Cook Captain (Royal Navy), Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 176 ...

on the 1768-71 HM Bark ''Endeavour'' expedition to the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

References

1701 births 1747 deaths 18th-century Finnish physicians People from Turku Members of the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala {{Finland-med-bio-stub