Carl Attems
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Carl August Graf Attems-Petzenstein (*October 13, 1868 in Graz, Austria; † April 19, 1952 in Vienna) was a famous Austrian zoologist. He published 138 scientific papers, most of them dealing with his specialist field, the myriapoda. He described about 1800 new species and subspecies from all over the world.
[edit] Life
Count Attems was born in 1868 in Graz. He attended school in Graz, then he followed his family's wish and studied law and law history. After finishing his studies in 1891 he went to Bonn and dedicated himself to his main interest: zoology. He started his zoology studies in Germany, later moved to Vienna. Attems completed his degree with the dissertation "Die Copulationsfüße der Polydesmiden".
During his further studies he spent a lot of time examining the myriapod collection of the Viennese Hofmuseum (today's Naturhistorisches Museum). In 1898 he visited the zoological station at Napels and one year later he went to Crete. The resulting publication was named "Myriopoden von Kreta, nebst Beiträgen zur allgemeinen Kenntnis einiger Gattungen." (Myriopods of Crete, with contributions to common knowledge of some species.)
In 1905 he became an assistant in the Crustacea, Arachnoidea, and Myriapoda collection of the museum. On several excursions to Macedonia, Slovenia, and Croatia he collected myriapods, which he afterwards examined in addition to other collections from all over the world. In between Attems was appointed curator of the Evertebrata-Varia collection and spent the summer of 1911 in Roscoff, France, studying polychaetes. In the same year he married Emma von Montbach.
During World War I he was called up for military service. Due to the economic crisis during the late 1920s he had to retire from any bureaucratic activity and focussed exclusively on his myriapod studies. Every day he visited the museum's collection. On April 19, 1952, Attems died on his usual way to the museum.
