Hermann Burmeister

Career

Burmeister was born in Stralsund, where his father was a customs officer. He studied medicine at Greifswald (1825–1827) and Halle (1827–1829), and in 1830 went to Berlin to qualify himself to be a teacher of natural history. His dissertation was titled De insectorum systemate naturali and graduated as a doctor of medicine on November 4, 1829 and then received a doctor of philosophy on December 19 in the same year. He then joined for military service in Berlin and Grünberg (Silesia). He was soon after appointed an instructor in the gymnasium at Cologne. He later became a professor of zoology at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg serving there from 1837 to 1861. During this period he published several major works on insects which also involved the examination of insect collections around Europe and those of wealthy collectors. He married Marie Elise, the daughter of shipowner and insect collector M.C. Sommer of Altona, in 1836.

In 1848, during the revolutionary excitement, he was sent by the city of Halle as deputy to the national assembly, and subsequently by the town of Leibnitz to the first Prussian chamber. Around 1848 he became a socialist and still later opposed slavery. He traveled to Brazil from 1850 to 1852 — partly supported through the efforts of Alexander von Humboldt — was cut short by a leg injury. He then visited Argentina from 1857 to 1860, returning to Germany with zoological collections. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1856. In 1861, he divorced his wife and went to live in Argentina, founding the Institute at the Museo Nacional in Buenos Aires. He married an Argentine woman and they had two sons, Carlos and Federico. Carlos also became a scientist. Burmeister headed the Academy of Sciences, formed from the scientific faculty of Argentina's National University of Córdoba. He took an interest in paleontology and was keenly interested in protecting fossils in the pampas region and helped the passage of a law.

In the field of herpetology he described many new species of amphibians and reptiles. He also mistakenly described a bovid atlas as belonging to Macrauchenia patachonica. Burmeister was said to be harsh and did not have any close circle of friends. While working at the Argentine museum, he had a fall from a ladder and landed on a glass case and injured himself seriously on 8 February 1892. He resigned from work on 18 April and died on 2 May. A state funeral was held on the 4 May and the president of Argentina, Carlos Pellegrini was present. A monument was placed on the bank of the Rio de La Plata in the Parque 3 Febrero on October 7, 1900 and later moved to the Parque Centenario.