Tiberius Cornelis Winkler

Infobox_Scientist
name = Tiberius Cornelis Winkler
birth_date = birth date|1822|5|28|mf=y
birth_place = Leeuwarden, Netherlands
residence =
nationality =
death_date = death date and age|1897|4|4|1822|5|28|mf=y
death_place = Haarlem, Netherlands
field = Medicine, Paleontology, Zoology
work_institution = Teylers Museum
predecessor = J.G. van Breda
successor = Eugène Dubois
known_for = Dutch translation of Darwin's "Origin of Species"
popular science

Tiberius Cornelis Winkler (1822-1897) was a Dutch anatomist, zoologist and natural historian, and the second curator of geology, paleontology and mineralogy at Teylers Museum in Haarlem. Next to translating the first edition of Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" (1860), he wrote a great number of works popularising science, particularly the life sciences.

Early life

Winkler was born in the Frisian capital, Leeuwarden, in 1822. There, he visited primary school until his 12th or 13th year. His father subsequently arranged his apprenticeship with a grain merchant. He used his wage to educate himself in French, then German, then English. This desire for self-education and self-discipline would characterise Winkler throughout his life.

He married in 1844 and began to study medicine in order to become a surgeon. In 1850, Winkler moved to Haarlem, together with his wife and four children, to begin his education at the local surgeon's college. He graduated two years later, and set up practice in Nieuwediep. His first patient, a fisherman, complained about being stung by a weever fish. His studies took him to the library of Teylers Museum in Haarlem. His subsequent article on the weever in the popular journal "Album der Natuur" establishes him as an expert on fishes.

At Teylers

Here, he also developed an interest in paleontology and geology. The curator, professor Van Breda, approached him to describe the fossil fishes from his own and Teylers' collections. This sets Winkler up at the museum and his work, duly lauded, is published in the "Verhandelingen" ('Transactions') of Teylers' Society in 1859. [Veen, Joop C. van, "Tiberius Cornelis Winkler 100 jaar geleden overleden", in: "Teylers Museum Magazijn" 7 (2007), 9-12.] This was followed up by further work on fishes from the German Solnhofen limestone, and a complete list of the museum's fossil fish collection.

This so much impressed the directors, that they approached Winkler to do the same for their other fossil and mineral collections. A year later he had finished the list, despite being forced to work in an unheated room and to combine it with his general practioner's office. In 1864, Winkler he was asked to become curator of Teylers' paleontological and mineralogical cabinet, a post he would keep until his death in 1897.

He immediately set to work to inventorise the museums' entire collection of fossils, which at the time was not numbered and, frequently, undocumented. On the advice of the prominent Utrecht natural historian Pieter Harting, he applied a numerical system, in which the fossils are divided into periods (Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Caenozoic) and sorted from 'high' to 'low'. This division, and the way in which Winkler applied it, already betrays the influence of Darwin's theory of evolution.

Completing this inventory would take until 1896, by which time six volumes and five supplements, documenting a total of 15,458 fossils, had been published. [Veen, Joop C. van, "Tiberius Cornelis Winkler 100 jaar geleden overleden", in: "Teylers Museum Magazijn" 7 (2007), 11.] Winkler also inventorised the museum's mineral collection.

Publications

Winkler was very active as a populariser of science. He wrote more than a hundred articles, many of them aimed at educating the general public, much like he had educated himself. Many of these works appeared in "Album der Natuur" ('Album of Nature').

Just as importantly, Winkler translated numerous scientific works into Dutch. Most famous among these was Charles Darwin's seminal Origin of Species, which appeared in Dutch one year after its English release in 1859. Winkler also proved himself to be a vocal defender of the theory of evolution, to the degree that he did not wish to question - contrary, at the time, to Darwin - man's place in evolution. [Besselink, Marijke. "Winkler? Nooit van Gehoord", in: "Teylers Museum Magazijn" 7 (2007), 7-8.]

References