Otto Schindewolf

Otto Schindewolf
Otto Schindewolf
Born	7 June 1896 Hanover
Died	10 June 1971 Tübingen
Nationality	Germany
Fields	paleontology
Institutions	University of Marburg University of Tübingen
Known for	evolution of corals and cephalopods

Otto Heinrich Schindewolf (7 June 1896, Hanover, Germany - 10 June 1971, Tübingen, West Germany) was a German paleontologist who studied the evolution of corals and cephalopods.

Schindewolf was on the faculty at the University of Marburg from 1919 until 1927. He then he became director of the Geological Survey of Berlin. In 1948 he became a professor at the University of Tübingen, where he retired as professor emeritus in 1964.

He was a saltationist who opposed the theory of gradual evolution, and in the 1930s suggested that major evolutionary transformations must have occurred in large leaps between species. This idea became known as the Hopeful Monster theory and was further taken and developed up by the geneticist Richard Goldschmidt in the 1940s. Schindewolf was also the first to suggest, in 1950, that mass extinctions might have been caused by extraterrestrial impacts or nearby supernova. From 1948 until his retirement in 1964, Schindewolf was professor of Geology and Paleontology at the University of Tübingen.

Bibliography

(incomplete)

• (German) Wenz W. (1938-1944) Teil 1: Allgemeiner Teil und Prosobranchia. In: Schindewolf O. H. (ed.) Handbuch der Paläozoologie, Band 6, Gastropoda, Verlag Gebrüder Bornträger, Berlin, xii + 1639 pp.

His Basic Questions in Paleontology was published in German in 1950, and was a landmark work in the field of paleontology and evolution.

References

External links

• Otto Schindewolf in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• (17 December 1938). "Handbuch der Paläozoologie". Nature 142: 1057 doi:10.1038/1421057a0 - review of the book.

Persondata
Name	Schindewolf, Otto Heinrich
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	7 June 1896
Place of birth	Hanover
Date of death	10 June 1971
Place of death	Tübingen