The New International Encyclopædia/Siebold, Karl Theodor Ernst von

SIEBOLD, zē'bṓlt, Karl Theodor Ernst von (1804-85). A German physiologist and zoölogist, born in Würzburg. In 1840 he was appointed to the chair of physiology at Erlangen, in 1845 at Freiburg, in 1850 at Breslau, and in 1853 at the University of Munich. Siebold was the originator, after Cuvier, of the first important reforms in systematic zoölogy, and established the unicellular nature of the Protozoa, which he first combined into a phylum. He produced in 1856 an epoch-making work, translated into English under the title “On a True Parthenogenesis in Moths and Bees” (1857). This was followed, in 1871, by a work in the same line (Beiträge zur Parthenogenesis der Arthropoden) in which he established the fact of parthenogenesis in two wasps, in a saw-fly, in several moths, and in certain phyllopod crustacea. Besides many papers giving the results of special investigations among the lower animals, he was the author in 1848, with Stannius, of a manual of the anatomy of animals, in which he established the branch of animals called Arthropoda. His last general work was a volume on the fresh-water fishes of Central Europe, in which he pointed out certain of the hybrid forms. With Kölliker he founded the Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie, still the leading morphological and anatomical journal of Europe.