Helmut Hasse (German: [ˈhasə]; 25 August 1898 – 26 December 1979) was a German mathematician working in algebraic number theory, known for fundamental contributions to class field theory, the application of p-adic numbers to local class field theory and diophantine geometry (Hasse principle), and to local zeta functions.
Melchior Treub (26 December 1851 – 3 October 1910) was a Dutch botanist. He worked at the Bogor Botanical Gardens in Buitenzorg on the island of Java, south of Batavia, Dutch East Indies, gaining renown for his work on tropical flora. He also founded the Bogor Agricultural Institute. He traveled and collected across many areas of Southeast Asia.
He was born in Voorschoten, and in 1873 he graduated in biology from the University of Leiden. Subsequently, he remained in Leiden as a botanical assistant. From 1880 to 1909 he was a botanist based in the Dutch East Indies.
In 1879 he was appointed a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) and was appointed as director of Bogor Botanical Gardens' Lands Plantentuin in Buitenzorg (Bogor) in the year 1880. Treub worked on tropical flora on Java and organized the Botanical Garden as a world-renowned scientific institution of botany. Under his leadership many crucial researches were successfully completed on plant diseases of economic crops.
In 1903 he established the Buitenzorg Landbouw Hogeschool, a school that later evolved into the Bogor Agricultural Institute. In 1905 he became director of the newly established Department of Agriculture in the Dutch East Indies. In 1907 Treub was the recipient of the Linnean Medal for his outstanding achievements in sciences. The Dutch "Society for the Promotion of the Physical Exploration of the Dutch Colonies" is sometimes referred to as the Treub Maatschappij.
As a botanical collector, he travelled throughout the Indies, and to the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Penang. He was interested in plant morphology and physiology, and published treatises on the morphology of Balanophoraceae, Loranthaceae and Lycopodiaceae. He is credited for coining the term "protocorm" to describe the early stages in the germination of lycopods.He worked for nearly 30 years at the gardens before returning to the Netherlands in 1909 due to his worsening health. Dr. Treub then settled on the village of Saint-Raphael on French Riviera, where he died in 1910.
Robert von Ostertag (March 24, 1864 – October 7, 1940) was a German veterinarian who was a native of Schwäbisch Gmünd.
He studied medicine in Berlin and veterinary medicine in Stuttgart, afterwards becoming a professor of hygiene at Tierärztliche Hochschule Stuttgart (1891–1892) and at the College of Veterinary Medicine in Berlin (1892–1907). In 1907 he became head of the veterinary department in the Reich Health Office in Berlin. In 1910 he traveled to German Southwest Africa in order to study diseases of sheep, and in 1913 he investigated rinderpest in German East Africa. In 1920 he became head of veterinary services in Germany.
In the 1890s, Ostertag started a rigorous program of meat inspection in Berlin, and he was referred to as the "Father of Veterinary Meat Inspection" in Germany. Ostertag's meat inspection act of 1900 greatly reduced incidences of bovine tuberculosis in human beings.
He was the author of numerous publications in veterinary science, and is remembered for his influential Lehrbuch für Fleischbeschauer ("Handbook of Meat Inspection"), a book that was later translated into English.
His name is lent to Ostertagia, a genus of attenuated nematodes of the family Trichostrongylidae. These organisms are found in cysts on the wall of the abomasum of cattle and other ruminants. The disease associated with the organism is called "ostertagiosis".
Friedrich Hermann Hund (4 February 1896 – 31 March 1997) was a German physicist from Karlsruhe known for his work on atoms and molecules.
Hermann Flohn (19 February 1912 – 23 June 1997) was a climatologist. Flohn was professor at the University of Bonn and head of the department at the Institute of Meteorology of Bonn University. He produced about 360 publications. Flohn was member in numerous scientific societies such as the Bavarian Academy, the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Academy of Belgium.
August Friedrich Leopold Weismann FRS (For), HonFRSE, LLD (17 January 1834 – 5 November 1914) was a German evolutionary biologist. Fellow German Ernst Mayr ranked him as the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the 19th century, after Charles Darwin. Weismann became the Director of the Zoological Institute and the first Professor of Zoology at Freiburg.
His main contribution involved germ plasm theory, at one time also known as Weismannism, according to which inheritance (in a multicellular animal) only takes place by means of the germ cells—the gametes such as egg cells and sperm cells. Other cells of the body—somatic cells—do not function as agents of heredity. The effect is one-way: germ cells produce somatic cells and are not affected by anything the somatic cells learn or therefore any ability an individual acquires during its life. Genetic information cannot pass from soma to germ plasm and on to the next generation. Biologists refer to this concept as the Weismann barrier. This idea, if true, rules out the inheritance of acquired characteristics as proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. However, a careful reading of Weismann's work over the span of his entire career shows that he had more nuanced views, insisting, like Darwin, that a variable environment was necessary to cause variation in the hereditary material.The idea of the Weismann barrier is central to the modern synthesis of the early 20th century, though scholars do not express it today in the same terms. In Weismann's opinion the largely random process of mutation, which must occur in the gametes (or stem cells that make them) is the only source of change for natural selection to work on. Weismann became one of the first biologists to deny Lamarckism entirely. Weismann's ideas preceded the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's work, and though Weismann was cagey about accepting Mendelism, younger workers soon made the connection.
Weismann is much admired today. Ernst Mayr judged him to be the most important evolutionary thinker between Darwin and the evolutionary synthesis around 1930–1940, and "one of the great biologists of all time".