Eduard von Martens

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Eduard von Martens (sometimes Carl or Karl Eduard von Martens) was a German zoologist. Born in Stuttgart in 1831, von Martens attended universities in Tübingen, Stuttgart and Munich, graduating from the University of Tübingen in 1855. In 1860, he set off as part of an expedition to the Far East, being responsible for the zoological section. When the rest of the expedition returned to Europe in 1862, von Martens continued to travel around the Malay Archipelago for another 15 months.

Until his death in 1904, von Martens worked at the Zoologisches Museum Berlin, being not only curator of the malacological and other invertebrate sections, but also being responsible for the establishment of the new museum, in the absence of a director from 1883 to 1887. Von Martens described 155 new genera (150 of them molluscs) and almost 1,800 species (including around 1,680 molluscs, 39 crustaceans, and 50 echinoderms).