Blasius Merrem
Blasius Merrem is a German zoologist , born the February 4th 1761 with Bremen and dead the February 23rd 1824 with Marbourg.
Wire of merchant, it is intended first of all for the priesthood and studies the Arab , the Greek and the Latin . It enters, in 1778, at the university of Göttingen where, under the influence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, it discovers the Zoologie and particularly the Ornithologie.
It considers a vast publication on the Classification of the Oiseau X but only of the fragments appear. Because, in order to earn its living, Merrem is obliged to become lawyer. In 1785, he becomes professor with Duisburg but he must supplement his thin wages by giving private lessons of mathematical and Physique, which leaves him little time for the zoology.
The disorders which the Europe at the end of the 18th century knows prevent it from concluding its projects of large monographic on the birds or the Reptile S.
Even if he dies in the indifference and misery, its impact on ornithology is considerable. Its work of classification is very in advance over its time. Those appear in the Abhandlungen of the Academy of Science of Berlin in 1813 and can be regarded as the starting point of modern taxonomy. It is him, in particular, which separates the first the Ratite S and the Carinate S; but it is unable to distinguish the trip hammers from the Hirondelle S, like many its contemporaries. He also discovers the pulmonary bags.
He publishes in 1790 Beiträge zur Geschichte der Amphibien where he describes many species in a very precise way and while giving some of good illustrations. Although one allots to Pierre André Latreille the creation of the class of the Amphibien S, Merrem separates them from the reptiles ten years before him. Taking into account the quality of this work, higher than those of its contemporaries like Lacépède (1756-1825), it is completely regrettable that Merrem could not conclude its projects.
Under the influence of Blumenbach and Peter Simon Pallas, it tries to reconcile two approaches in opposition then: that of Linné and that of Buffon. It employs the binomial system first but without limiting itself to only one anatomical criterion and adopts a more morphological approach specific to the second.
Source
Kraig Adler (1989). Contributions to the History off Herpetology , Society for the study off amphibians and reptiles.
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