German marine biologist (1852?1914)
Carl Chun
or
Karl Friedrich Gustav Chun
(1 October 1852 ? 11 April 1914) was a German marine
biologist
who worked as a professor at the
University of Konigsberg
(1883),
Breslau
(1891) and at
Leipzig
(1898).
[1]
He was a pioneer of German oceanographic research, organizing the first deep-sea expedition aboard the
SS Valdivia
in 1898-99. He spent much of his life studying the collections made during the expedition, and was responsible for discovering many marine organisms, including the
vampire squid
.
Life and work
[
edit
]
Chun was born in
Hochst
, today a part of
Frankfurt
, where his father Gustav (1827?1907) was rector of the Weißfrauenschule. Chun went to the Lessing Gymnasium and became interested in zoology from an early age thanks to the
Senckenberg Museum
in Frankfurt where he listened to lectures by
Fritz Noll
,
Hermann Theodor Geyler
, and
Karl von Fritsch
. He studied at the
University of Gottingen
and then at the
University of Leipzig
, receiving a doctorate in 1874. From 1878 to 1883 he was
privat-docent
of zoology and an assistant to
Rudolf Leuckart
. Chun became deeply interested in oceanic organisms and worked at the Naples Zoological Station where he studied and published a monograph on comb jellyfish under
Anton Dohrn
. He completed his habilitation in Leipzig (1878). He became a professor at the University of
Konigsberg
(1883?1891). He moved to
Breslau
in 1891 and succeeded Leuckart at Leipzig in 1898.
[2]
[3]
Deep sea exploration had been popularized by the British
Challenger Expedition
(1872?1876)
and the Germans, not to be left behind, funded Chun's proposal made in 1897 at the meeting of the Deutsche Naturforscher und Aertze in Leipzig. He led the
German deep sea expedition
aboard the steamship
SS Valdivia
which left Hamburg on 1 August 1898.
[2]
They visited
Bouvetøya
, the
Kerguelen Islands
, and other islands, before returning to Hamburg, where they arrived on 1 May 1899.
[4]
The material collected was described in 24 volumes that were published until 1940 with more than 70 specialists involved including
Sir John Murray
of the Challenger expedition.
[5]
In 1888, Chun described
seasonal vertical migration
(SVM) of oceanic organisms which has a periodicity of ca. 1 year. Chun examined depth-stratified net samples from the
Mediterranean Sea
. He explained the seasonal disappearance of jellyfish and crustaceans from the upper
pelagic layer
of the ocean in terms of their migration to depths below 1000 m. In contrast to
diel vertical migration
(DVM) which occurs daily, SVM is still not well understood.
[6]
[7]
He examined the distribution of phytoplankton with depth and demonstrated that although there were differences in distribution, they were not completely absent at any depth as had been claimed by the contemporary American zoologist
Alexander Agassiz
.
[8]
Chun also examined adaptations of
Schizopod
eye in relation to depth and light penetration under the sea. With depth, the eye adapted a separate lateral and frontal regions.
Chun was a specialist on
cephalopods
and
plankton
. He discovered and named the
vampire squid
(
Vampyroteuthis infernalis
, which means "vampire squid from hell"). Chun was also interested in making science accessible to larger audiences. He published in a popular narrative of the "Valdivia" expedition,
Aus den Tiefen des Weltmeeres
(1900) which captured the public imagination of the period.
[9]
[10]
Chun married Lily, the daughter of
Karl Vogt
, whom he first met while working at the Naples Zoological Station in 1884. They had two daughters Annie (b. 1885) who married
Otto zur Strassen
and
Lily
(born 1887) who became a social democrat and was married to the botanist
Ernst Pringsheim Jr.
Chun suffered for several years after a deer trophy fell off the wall onto him in November 1908. Shortly after recovering from the injury he developed a heart problem and died on 11 April 1914 in
Leipzig
, Germany, aged 61.
[3]
[11]
Selected works
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Mills, Eric L. (1980).
"Alexander Agassiz, Carl Chun and the Problem of the Intermediate Fauna"
.
Oceanography: The Past
. Springer. pp. 360?372.
doi
:
10.1007/978-1-4613-8090-0_34
.
ISBN
978-1-4613-8092-4
. Retrieved
21 December
2021
.
- ^
a
b
c
UNI Leipzig Professorenkatalog
(biographical sketch)
- ^
a
b
Mertens, Robert (1957). "Chun, Karl".
Neue Deutsche Biographie
(in German). Vol. 3. pp. 252?253.
- ^
Chun, Carl (1903).
Aus den Tiefen des Weltmeeres
. Jena: Gustav Fischer. pp. V, 12.
doi
:
10.18452/2
.
- ^
Wust, Georg (1964).
"The major deep-sea expeditions and research vessels 1873-1960: a contribution to the history of oceanography"
(PDF)
.
Progress in Oceanography
.
2
: 1?52.
Bibcode
:
1964PrOce...2....1W
.
doi
:
10.1016/0079-6611(64)90002-3
.
- ^
Bandara, Kanchana; Varpe, Øystein; Wijewardene, Lishani; Tverberg, Vigdis; Eiane, Ketil (August 2021).
"Two hundred years of zooplankton vertical migration research"
.
Biological Reviews
.
96
(4): 1547?1589.
doi
:
10.1111/brv.12715
.
hdl
:
10037/22091
.
PMID
33942990
.
S2CID
233722666
. Retrieved
21 December
2021
.
- ^
Rinke, Karsten; Petzoldt, Thomas (22 October 2008).
"Individual-based simulation of diel vertical migration of
Daphnia
: A synthesis of proximate and ultimate factors"
.
Limnologica
.
38
(3): 269?285.
doi
:
10.1016/j.limno.2008.05.006
.
- ^
Dolan, John R (2023).
"Pioneers of plankton research: Salvatore Lo Bianco (1860?1910)"
.
Journal of Plankton Research
.
45
(3): 405?412.
doi
:
10.1093/plankt/fbad010
.
ISSN
0142-7873
.
- ^
Andreas W. Daum
,
Wissenschaftspopularisierung im 19. Jahrhundert: Burgerliche Kultur, naturwissenschaftliche Bildung und die deutsche Offentlichkeit, 1848?1914
. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998,
ISBN
3-486-56337-8
, pp. 330, 428, 480 (2nd ed. 2002 with the same page numbers).
- ^
R. Dolan, John (2020).
"Depictions of the Deep: Illustrations in the Popular Press of Deep-Sea Animals from Jules Verne (1860's) to William Beebe (1930's) and beyond"
.
Arts et Sciences
.
4
(2).
doi
:
10.21494/ISTE.OP.2020.0475
.
- ^
"Chun, Karl Friedrich Gustav"
. Hessische Biografie.
Further reading
[
edit
]
Ilse Jahn, ed.,
Geschichte der Biologie: Theorien, Methoden, Institutionen, Kurzbiographien
. 3. ed., Berlin: Spektrum, 2000,
ISBN
978-3-8274-1023-8
, pp. 798, 867, 881, 900, 996.
External links
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