Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau | |
---|---|
Born | 17 July 1769 Mühlhausen (now in Thuringia) |
Died | 17 May 1857 Mühlhausen | (aged 87)
Nationality | German |
Known for | marine biology, dermatology |
Scientific career | |
Fields | naturalist, physician, draftsman and engraver |
Author abbrev. (zoology) | Tilesius |
Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau (17 July 1769 – 17 May 1857) was a German naturalist and explorer, physician, draftsman and engraver. He was a member of the Order of St. Vladimir and of the Legion of Honour.[1]
Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius was born in Mühlhausen (then part of the Holy Roman Empire) on 17 July 1769. His father was a merchant and actuary and his mother the daughter and sister of surgeons. It was his mother's brother who introduced the young Tilesius to the natural sciences and drawing.[a]
In 1790 Tilesius began studies of natural sciences and medicine at the University of Leipzig, and at the same time took drawing lessons from Adam Friedrich Oeser at the art academy in the Pleissenburg. He completed his master's degree of arts in 1795, graduated as a doctor of philosophy in 1797, and in 1801 as a doctor of medicine. In 1795-96 he traveled with the earl and scientist Johann Centurius Hoffmannsegg by ship to Portugal. On this trip he studied marine animals, as well as the teaching and practice of medicine in Portugal. The results were published in several papers.[b]
On 12 May 1807 he married Olympia von Sitzky, 20 years his junior, daughter of a Polish nobleman. A son Adolf was born the following year, but they were separated in 1809.[f]
One of his projects while in Russia was to reconstruct the skeleton of the Adams mammoth, a woolly mammoth whose nearly intact frozen carcass was excavated from the Siberian permafrost in 1806.[g] This represented one of the earliest attempts to reconstruct the skeleton of an extinct animal.[h] (Tilesius made one notable error in this effort, exchanging the tusks so that they diverged instead of converged.[3])
In 1814, Tilesius returned from Russia to his hometown of Mühlhausen and put his son in the care of his grandmother. He continued to lecture and publish on zoological, medical and ethnographic subjects, and attained membership in a number of scientific societies across Europe and in the United States, but did not obtain another academic position.[i] He spent most of the rest of his life in Mühlhausen and Leipzig, and died in Mühlhausen (by then part of Prussia) in 1857.