Oskar Kuhn
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Oskar Kuhn (7 March 1908, Munich[1] – 1 May 1990) was a German palaeontologist.[2][3]
Kuhn was educated in Dinkelsbühl and Bamberg and then studied natural science, specialising in geology and paleontology, at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), from which he received his D. Phil. in 1932.[1]
He worked at the LMU's Geological Institute, among other things on the Fossilium Catalogus (Catalogue of Fossils), and then in 1938 on a stipend from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, moved to the University of Halle, where he worked on the Geiseltal fossils.[1] In 1939 he achieved his Habilitation with a thesis on the Halberstadt Keuper fauna, and in 1940 was named Privatdozent in geology and paleontology.[1]
Informed by his Catholic religion, Kuhn was an exponent of idealistic morphology: he viewed evolution as operating only within predetermined morphological classes.[4][5] In 1943 he declared, "The theory of descent has collapsed."[6] After a political conflict with his mentor, Johannes Weigelt, over evolution, Kuhn's teaching certification was withdrawn (in an act known as "remotion") in November 1941.[1][7][8] He had to leave Halle and was immediately called up for wartime service in the Wehrmacht. In February 1942 he was released because of lung disease. (He had been a member of the SA from 1933 to 1936 but left for health reasons.)[1]
In 1947 he became professor extraordinarius at the University of Bamberg, but left after a short time.[1]
Selected works
- Paläozoologie in Tabellen. (1940)
- Lehrbuch der Paläozoologie. (Textbook of Paleontology) (1949)
- Die Deszendenztheorie: Grundlegung der Ganzheitsbiologie. (1951)
- Lebensbilder und Evolution fossiler Saurier, Amphibien und Reptilien. (1961) (with Hartmut Haubold)
- Die Vorzeitlichen Wirbellosen. System und Evolution. (1966)
- Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie - Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology. Stuttgart, New York: G. Fischer, 1978- . ISBN 3-89937-007-4. OCLC.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 "Oskar Kuhn" (in German). Retrieved 2010-07-13.
- ↑ "Entry on Oskar Kuhn". Catalogue of the German National Library (in German). Archived from the original on 2012-03-30. Retrieved 2010-07-11.
- ↑ "Oskar Kuhn - Library of Congress". id.loc.gov. Retrieved 20 January 2023.
- ↑ Martina Kölbl-Ebert, Geological Society of London, International Union of Geological Sciences, International Commission on the History of the Geological Sciences, Geology and Religion: A History of Harmony and Hostility, London: Geological Society, 2009, ISBN 978-1-86239-269-4, p. 213.
- ↑ Georgy S. Levit and Kay Meister, The history of essentialism vs. Ernst Mayr's “Essentialism Story”: A case study of German idealistic morphology. Theory in Biosciences (2006), vol. 124, no. 3-4, pp. 281-307
- ↑ Otto Heinrich Schindewolf and Wolf-Ernst Reif, Basic Questions in Paleontology: Geologic Time, Organic Evolution, and Biological Systematics, University of Chicago Press, 1993, ISBN 0-226-73834-5, p. 445.
- ↑ Henrik Eberle, Die Martin-Luther-Universität in der Zeit des Nationalsozialismus 1933-1945, Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-89812-150-X, pp. 101, 102: Weigelt regarded Catholic-inspired thought at the university that undercut evolution as a fundamental threat.
- ↑ Hermann-Josef Rupieper, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg 1502-2002, Halle (Saale): Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 2002, ISBN 3-89812-144-5, pp. 478-80: the section on "Der ,Fall' Kuhn" states that Weigelt had brought Kuhn to Halle after he had been refused Habilitation at Munich.
