David Friedrich Weinland


David Friedrich Weinland was a German zoologist and novelist.
He studied theology and natural sciences in Tübingen, then worked as an assistant at the Zoological Museum in Berlin. From 1855 he conducted scientific investigations in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. In 1859 he returned to Germany as director of the Frankfurt Zoological Garden — in this capacity he edited the journal "Der Zoologische Garten".
Following the publication of Otto Hahn's 1880 work, Die Meteorite und ihre Organismen, Weinland publicly supported Hahn's theory regarding the chondrites. In 1881 Weinland, writing in the popular geographical journal Das Ausland, asserted the correctness of Hahn's attempt to classify the inclusions of the chondrites as organic, although slightly modifying Hahn's original assignment of the genera, by stating that the chondrites are in fact nothing but fossiliferous rocks, i.e. the petrified remains of life-forms. He published in 1882 a treatise entitled Ueber die in Meteoriten entdeckten Thiereste in which he established sixteen new genera, each with multiple species.
He was the father of chemist Rudolf Friedrich Weinland.

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