Julius Theodor Christian Ratzeburg

Julius Theodor Christian Ratzeburg is a zoologist, a Entomologiste and a forest German, born the February 16th 1801 with Berlin and dead the October 24th 1871 in this same city.

Biography

He is the son of a veterinary professor of the school. He studies the Médecine and the Natural science in Berlin and is interested mainly in the Botanique. He becomes lecturer deprived at the university in 1828. Ratzeburg is in liaison with the brothers Alexander (1769-1859) and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). He becomes professor of Natural history in 1831 at the forest school of Eberswalde, located at 50 km in the North-East of Berlin, the invitation of Friedrich Wilhelm Leopold Pfeil (1783-1859). Ratzeburg founds the garden of forest botany there and works there until its retirement in 1869. It goes back then to Berlin where it dies in 70 years.

Ratzeburg is the author of important work of forest entomology and is regarded as the creator of this discipline. It is interested in particular in the S parasites. It is not satisfied to name the species which it describes, it is interested systematically in their biology and the relation that these species maintain with their hosts. In the same way for the harmful species as he studies, Ratzeburg attempts to describe all the stages of the insects, their vital cycle and, as much as possible, the enemies whom he has.

In its monumental work, Die Ichneumonen der Forstinsecten , which appears in three volumes of 1844 with 1852, Ratzeburg describes 600 species of the parasites, their vital cycle and like their relations with their hosts.

Of 1817 with 1824, it publishes, with Johann Friedrich von Brandt (1802-1879) Medizinische Zoologie (or medical Zoologie ), which remains a lasting reference book of many years.

Most of its collections are destroyed during the Second world war. Wanting to protect them from advanced from the Russian troops, one then tries to transport them more to the west, but the train which transports them is then bombarded.

List partial of the publications

Entomological work

Die Forstinsekten , Berlin 1837-1844, three volumes and a supplement; republication in Vienna in 1885.
Die Waldverderber und ihre Feinde , Berlin, 1841, eighth republication of Johann Friedrich Judeich (1828-1894) and of Hinrich Nitsche (1845-1902) under the title of Lehrbuch DER mitteleuropäischen Insektenkunde , Vienna, 1885, with a biography.
Die Ichneumonen der Forstinsecten in forstlicher und entomologischer Beziehung , Berlin 1844-1852, three volumes.
Die Nachkrankheiten und die Reproduktion der Kiefer nach dem Fraß der Forleule , Berlin, 1862.
Die Waldverderbnis oder dauernder Schaden, welcher durch Insektenfraß, Schälen etc year lebenden Waldbäumen entsteht , Berlin, 1866-1868, two volumes.

Other publications

Medizinische Zoology , with Brandt, Berlin, 1827-1834, two volumes.
Abbildung und Beschreibung DER in Deutschland wild wachsenden Giftgewächse , with Brandt and Philipp Phöbus (1804-1880), Berlin 1834; republication in 1838.
Forstnaturwissenschaftliche Reisen , Berlin 1842.
Die Standortsgewächse und Unkräuter Deutschlands , Berlin 1859.
Forstwissenschaftliches Schriftstellerlexikon , Berlin 1872-1873.

Sources

Translation of the article of English language of Wikipédia (version of January 27th, 2006).
Stefan Vidal (2005). The history off Hymenopteran parasitoid research in Germany, Biological Control , 32 : 25-33.

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