Karl Möbius

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Karl August Möbius (* 7 February 1825 in Eilenburg; † 26 April 1908 in Berlin) was a German zoologist and ecologist. Möbius was born in the town of Eilenburg, Saxony-Anhalt. At the age of four he attended primary school (Bergschule Eilenburg) and at the age of 12 he was sent by his father to train as a teacher. In 1844 he passed the exams with distinction and thereafter worked as teacher in Seesen (Harz). In 1849 he began studying Natural Sciences and Philosophy at the University in Berlin. After his study he teached Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geography, Physics, and Chemistry at the Johanneum high school in Hamburg. In 1863 he opened the first German sea water aquarium in Hamburg. In 1868, shortly after passing his doctoral examination at the University of Halle, he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel and as director of the Zoological Museum. Marine animals were among his main research interests and his first more comprehensive work about the fauna of the Kieler Bucht (Die Fauna der Kieler Bucht; two volumes in 1865 and 1872, respectively), co-authored by Heinrich Adolph Meyer, already emphasized ecological aspects. Between 1868 and 1870 he studyed the ecology of oyster banks, mainly in order to establish potentials for oyster farming in coastal areas of Germany. This work resulted in two land marking publications at their time, (1870: Über Austern- und Miesmuschelzucht und Hebung derselben an der norddeutschen Küste, On oyster and blue mussel farming in coastal areas of Northern Germany; Die Auster und die Austernwirtschaft, Oyster and oyster farming), in which he concluded that oyster farming is not a realistic option for Northern Germany. More important, however, was that he was first to describe in detail the interactions between the different organismic components in the ecosystem oyster bank, and coined the term biocenose. Until today, this is a key-term in the biological discipline of synecology. In 1888 Möbius became director of the Zoological Collections of the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin and Professor for Systematic and Geographical Zoology at the Kaiser Wilhelm University, Berlin. Here he taught until he retired at the age of 80 in 1905.