Friedrich Moritz Brauer

Who was Friedrich Moritz Brauer?

Friedrich Moritz Brauer. An Austrian entomologist who was Director of the Naturhistorisches Hofmuseum, Vienna, at the time of his death. He wrote many papers on Diptera and Neuroptera.

From an assistant in the Entomological Museum at the University of Vienna, Brauer became Custodian of the collections in 1873 and in the following year was appointed Professor of zoology in the University. He was elected in an Honorary Fellow of the Entomological Society of London in 1900.

Brauer’s first worked on the order Neuroptera, and his first entomological publication, in 1850, was a revision of the genus Chrysopa. This was followed during the next few years by numerous papers on the biology of the order which established his reputation as one of the foremost European authorities on the Neuroptera.

1858 he began studies of the life history of the Dipterous family Oestridae; the result was the publication in 1863 of “Monographie der Oestriden”. An outcome of these researches was the erection of two divisions of the Diptera, based mainly on the form of the pupa. The divisions are Orthorrhapha and Cyclorrhapha.

Subsequent investigations into the metamorphoses of the entire order resulted in the publication of System of Diptera “based upon recent advances in anatomy and embryology”,which appeared in 1883. This was generally regarded as the best arrangement of the Diptera yet proposed. The system which with a review by Dr. Sharp appears in the “Cambridge Natural History” Insects part 1 p.175 divides the class into no fewer than 17 orders, the old Linnean “Neuroptera” furnishing 7 of these.