Hermann von Ihering

Hermann von Ihering (1850 to 1930) was a German-born physician and naturalist who spent most of his working life in Brazil. Born in Kiel as the oldest son of the Gottingen professor Rudolf von Jhering, he studied medicine at the universities of Giessen, Leipzig, Berlin and Gottingen, worked as an assistant at the zoological institute in Gottingen, and wrote his doctoral thesis on prognathism and its relation to the base of the skull. He later lectured in zoology at Erlangen and Leipzig. In 1880 he travelled to Brazil, worked at the National Museum in Rio de Janeiro as a travelling naturalist, and was naturalized Brazilian in 1885. From 1893 he was the first director of the Museu Paulista in Sao Paulo, a post he left in 1916. He returned to Europe in 1920 and died at Giessen in 1930. His source calls him a doctor, professor and ornithologist, so he belongs here as a medically trained natural historian rather than as a practising clinician.