Milestones of Science Books

EHRENBERG, Christian Gottfried.

Passat-Staub und Blut-Regen, ein grosses organisches unsichtbares Wirken und Leben in der Atmosphäre. Mehrere Vorträge. Vorgehalten in der Königl. Preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin vom 23. Mai 1844 bis 1849.

Berlin: 1849.

1st Edition. Soft cover. Folio - over 12 - 15" tall. Good. Item #001975

192 pp., 6 coloured engraved plates. Large folio (460x290 mm). Uncut, in contemporary wrappers, some foxing (some pages stronger), somewhat creased and torn, spine repaired, wrapper detached from book block. ----

Poggendorff I, 646 (dat. irrig 1847); Pritzel 2639; Roper 30. - First edition of Ehrenberg's scientific study on "blood rain". His microscopic examinations were primarily based on dust samples collected by Charles Darwin during the Beagle voyage.
Ehrenberg, born April 19, 1795, was appointed professor of medicine at Berlin University in 1827. In 1829 he accompanied Humboldt through eastern Russia to the Chinese frontier. After his return he began to concentrate his studies on microscopic organisms, which until then had not been systematically studied. For nearly 30 years Ehrenberg examined samples of water, soil, sediment, blowing dust and rock and described thousands of new species, among them well-known flagellates such as Euglena, ciliates such as Paramecium aurelia and Paramecium caudatum, and many fossils, in nearly 400 scientific publications. He was particularly interested in a unicellular group of protists called diatoms, but he also studied, and named, many species of radiolaria and foraminifera. These researches had an important bearing on some of the infusorial earths used for polishing and other economic purposes; they added, moreover, largely to our knowledge of the microorganisms of certain geological formations, especially of the chalk, and of the marine and freshwater accumulations. Until Ehrenberg took up the study it was not known that considerable masses of rock were composed of minute forms of animals or plants. He also demonstrated that the phosphorescence of the sea was due to organisms. He was a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences from 1836 and a foreign member of the Royal Society of London from 1837. In 1839, he won the Wollaston Medal, the highest award granted by the Geological Society of London. He continued until late in life to investigate the microscopic organisms of the deep sea and of various geological formations. He died in Berlin on June 27, 1876. -

Erste Ausgabe. Eingehende naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen des Phänomens des "Blutregens", als dessen Ursache Ehrenberg den durch Mikroorganismen gefärbten Passatstaub erkannte. Für seine mikroskopischen Untersuchungen nutzte er vor allem Staubproben, die Charles Darwin auf seiner Reise mit der Beagle gesammelt hatte. Darwin hatte Ehrenberg mehr als 180 Proben zur Untersuchung nach Berlin geschickt und stand mit ihm in regem Kontakt.

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