| Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th Edition | Public Domain via Project Gutenberg |
(1800-1862), German geologist, was born on the 3rd of March 1800 at Ziegelhausen near Heidelberg. Studying at the university at Heidelberg he took his doctor's degree in the faculty of medicine in 1821, and in the following year was appointed professor of natural history. He now devoted himself to palaeontological studies, and to fieldwork in various parts of Germany, Italy and France. From its commencement in 1830 to 1862 he assisted in editing the Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, &c., continued as Neues Jahrbuch. His principal work, Lethaea Geognostica (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1834-1838; 3rd ed. with F. Römer, 3 vols., 1851-1856), has been regarded as one of the foundations of German stratigraphical geology. His Handbuch einer Geschichte der Natur, of which the first part was issued in 1841, gave a general account of the physical history of the earth, while the second part dealt with the life-history, species being regarded as direct acts of creation. The third part included his famous Index Palaeontologicus, and was issued in 3 vols., 1848-1849, with the assistance of H. von Meyer and H. R. Göppert. This record of fossils has proved of inestimable value to all palaeontologists. An important work on recent and fossil zoology, Die Klassen und Ordnungen des Thier-Reichs, was commenced by Bronn. He wrote the volumes dealing with Amorphozoa, Actinozoa, and Malacozoa, published 1859-1862; the work was continued by other naturalists. In 1861 Bronn was awarded the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. He died at Heidelberg on the 5th of July 1862.