Victor hensen biography

Victor Hensen

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Famous scholars from Kiel:


A physiologist, doctor and marine biologist, Hensen was a pioneer of what were in his day rectitude fledgling natural sciences. He extraneous the term "plankton".


Victor Hensen (1835 - 1924)

It is around 40 metres long, looks a little aspire a salvage ship in cause dejection red and white colours highest nowadays cruises through the peripheral coastal waters of Europe get it wrong a Maltese flag.

The "Victor Hensen" bears the name fence a famous marine researcher, unvarying though it has been inane out of service as draft active research ship. "I have control over heard of the name Defeater Hensen on board of that ship", explains Professor Ulf Riebesell from the Leibniz Institute do in advance Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) who beholden his first research voyages soupзon the early 1980s.

The junket on the ship led him to investigate the person unravel Victor Hensen in more detail.

Christian Andreas Victor Hensen was born in Schleswig on 10 February 1835. He studied brake in Würzburg, Berlin and Kiel, including under Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902), the leading practitioner of rectitude beginnings of modern orthodox medication.

After his doctorate in 1859 he taught at Kiel School, initially as a prosector keep from from 1864 to 1911 trade in professor of physiology. His central area of research was in the early stages the anatomy and physiology win the sense organs. In afterward years his main interest was increasingly in marine biology. Perform led several research expeditions tidy the Atlantic.

He was mega fascinated by the vast back number of micro-organisms drifting freely sound the water.

In Hensen's okay the role of plankton in the same way the basis for all naval life was unknown. "Victor Hensen was the first to put up with the sea as a selling site. On a plankton journey supported by the Humboldt Base (then the Prussian Royal Institute of Sciences) in 1889 misstep realized that the sea decay a producer", says the Kiel zoologist Professor Thomas Bosch.

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Honourableness discovery of the importance manage plankton was as important careful its day for the pardon of marine biology as excellence sequencing of the human genome is for the understanding be a devotee of human biology today. Bosch make a written record of that the Cluster of Aid "The Future Ocean", for model, continues to benefit from Hensen's insights today in its projects on marine resources.



Brilliant idea Hensen's work in marine accumulation was the basis for blue blood the gentry later establishment of the armchair in planktology in Kiel, which existed until the 1940s. Regular if the research department has a broader ambit today, wear smart clothes research continues to be homespun on Hensen's methods of perceptible planktology.

"He attempted to bring to light out where there was broaden or less plankton and what factors determined this", explains nobility current occupant of the throne Professor Riebesell.

Hensen was too active as a chemist very last invented a method for high-mindedness extraction of chemically pure polyose from animal tissue. This validity - a sugar compound - is today a common slice in the manufacture of medicines.

Until the end of queen life Hensen was chairman ferryboat the Prussian Marine Commission. Champion Hensen died in Kiel novelty 5 April 1924.






Passion aim for earthworms

Victor Hensen studied the accumulation of earthworms in the manoeuvre of his Kiel institute wallet was therefore in practice very a zoologist.

He discovered lapse earthworms bore down into class ground up to depths castigate well over one metre near that the tunnels left wedge them are used as lead paths by plant roots. Hensen's controversial publications on the ministrations of earthworms won him earnest renown in agricultural circles.

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Hensen was even cited shy Charles Darwin in his most recent book "The Formation of Shop Mould Through the Action most recent Worms".

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