Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg

Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg (19 April 1795 – 27 June 1876), German naturalist, zoologist, comparative anatomist, geologist, and microscopist, was one of the most famous and productive scientists of his time.

The son of a judge, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg was born in Delitzsch, near Leipzig. He first studied theology at the University of Leipzig, then medicine and natural sciences in Berlin and became a friend of the famous explorer Alexander von Humboldt. In 1818, he completed his doctoral dissertation on fungi, Sylvae mycologicae Berolinenses.

In 1820–1825, on a scientific expedition to the Middle East with his friend Wilhelm Hemprich, he collected thousands of specimens of plants and animals. He investigated parts of Egypt, the Libyan desert, the Nile valley and the northern coasts of the Red Sea,[1] where he made a special study of the corals. Subsequently parts of Syria, Arabia and Abyssinia were examined. Some results of these travels and of the important collections that had been made were reported on by Humboldt in 1826. While in Sudan he designed the mansion of the local governor of Dongola, Abidin Bey.

Ehrenberg was appointed professor of medicine at Berlin University in 1827. In 1829 he accompanied Humboldt through eastern Russia to the Chinese frontier. After his return he began to concentrate his studies on microscopic organisms, which until then had not been systematically studied.

For nearly 30 years Ehrenberg examined samples of water, soil, sediment, blowing dust and rock and described thousands of new species, among them well-known flagellates such as Euglena, ciliates such as Paramecium aurelia and Paramecium caudatum, and many fossils, in nearly 400 scientific publications. He was particularly interested in a unicellular group of protists called diatoms, but he also studied, and named, many species of radiolaria, foraminifera and dinoflagellates.

After his death in 1876, his collections of microscopic organisms were deposited in the Museum für Naturkunde at the University of Berlin.