Johan Christian Fabricius facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Johan Christian Fabricius
|
|
|---|---|
.jpg) |
|
| Born | 7 January 1745 Tønder, Schleswig (now Denmark)
|
| Died | 3 March 1808 (aged 63) Kiel, Holstein (now Germany)
|
| Citizenship | Danish |
| Education | University of Copenhagen, University of Uppsala |
| Known for | Classification of the insects |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | |
| Institutions | University of Copenhagen, University of Kiel |
| Influences | Carl Linnaeus |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | J.Fabr. |
| Author abbrev. (zoology) | Fabricius |
Johan Christian Fabricius (born January 7, 1745 – died March 3, 1808) was a Danish zoologist. He was an expert in "Insecta," which back then meant all arthropods. This included insects, arachnids (like spiders), and crustaceans (like crabs).
Fabricius was a student of the famous scientist Carl Linnaeus. Many people see him as one of the most important insect scientists of the 1700s. He named almost 10,000 animal species. He also created the basic system we still use today to classify insects.
Contents
Life and Education
Johan Christian Fabricius was born on January 7, 1745, in a town called Tønder. His father was a doctor there. Fabricius went to school in Altona and then started at the University of Copenhagen in 1762.
Later that same year, he traveled to Uppsala with his friend and relative, Johan Zoëga. There, he studied for two years under Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus was a very famous scientist who created a system for naming living things.
Becoming a Professor
After his studies, Fabricius started working on his big book, Systema entomologiæ. It was published in 1775. During this time, his father helped him financially.
In 1770, Fabricius became a professor in Copenhagen. A few years later, the University of Kiel offered him a job. He became a professor of natural history and economics. The university even promised to build a natural history museum and a botanical garden for him.
Fabricius tried to quit his job at Kiel three times! Once, his students asked the King of Denmark, Christian VII, to stop him from leaving. So, Fabricius stayed at Kiel for the rest of his life.
Travels and Later Life
While working in Kiel, Fabricius often traveled to London in the summer. He went there to study the insect collections of British scientists like Joseph Banks.
Later in his career, Fabricius spent a lot of time in Paris. He met with other important naturalists like Georges Cuvier. He was also interested in the big changes happening during the French Revolution.
In 1807, he heard about a British attack on Copenhagen. This news made his health worse. He returned to Kiel and sadly passed away on March 3, 1808, at 63 years old. He had two sons who both became doctors.
Ideas on Evolution
Fabricius had some interesting ideas about how living things change over time. He thought that humans might have come from great apes. He also believed that new species could form when different existing species had offspring together. This is called hybridization.
Some people even call him the "Father of Lamarckism." This is because he believed that new species could form through changes in their bodies. These changes would happen as they adapted to their environment.
Fabricius also wrote about how the environment affects how species develop. He also discussed selection, where females might choose the strongest males to mate with.
Important Scientific Work
Fabricius is known as one of the greatest entomologists (insect scientists) of the 1700s. He was a better observer of insects than his teacher, Carl Linnaeus, who focused more on plants.
Fabricius named 9,776 species of insects. Linnaeus, in comparison, named about 3,000. Fabricius also identified many species of Tenebrionidae beetles from Egypt.
How He Classified Insects
Fabricius added two new ideas to the way species were classified. He looked at both "artificial" and "natural" features.
- Artificial features helped him figure out what a species was.
- Natural features helped him understand how species were related to other groups.
Linnaeus mainly classified insects based on their wings. But Fabricius used the shape of their mouthparts to group them into orders. He believed that "those whose nourishment and biology are the same, must then belong to the same genus."
Fabricius's system is still the basis for how insects are classified today. However, the names he gave to the orders are not always used anymore. For example, he called the order for beetles "Eleutherata." Today, we call them "Coleoptera." His term Glossata is still used, but for a smaller group of Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths).
Fabricius was also the first to divide the Staphylinidae (rove beetles). Linnaeus had considered them all one group. In 1775, Fabricius created the genus Paederus and described 77 species of Staphylinidae.
Major Books on Insects
Here are some of his most important books about insects:
- Systema entomologiæ (1775)
- Genera insectorum (1776)
- Species insectorum (1781)
- Mantissa insectorum (1787)
- Entomologia systematica emendata et aucta (1792–1799)
- Systema eleuthatorum (1801)
- Systema rhyngotorum (1803)
- Systema piezatorum (1804)
- Systema antliatorum (1805)
- Systema glossatorum (1807)
You can find many of his works in online libraries:
- Biodiversity Heritage Library (24 items)
- Google Books (24 items)
- Gallica (12 items)
- HathiTrust (1 item)
Fabricius's insect collections are now kept in several museums around the world. These include the Natural History Museum in London, the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, and the Zoological Museum in Kiel.
See also
In Spanish: Johan Christian Fabricius para niños
