Johan Wilhelm Dalman

Who was Johan Wilhelm Dalman?

Johan Wilhelm Dalman was a Swedish physician and a naturalist. He first studied at Christianfeld in Schleswig-Holstein then at the University of Lund and the University of Uppsala. He was mainly interested in entomology and botany. He received his degree in 1816 then his doctorate in 1817 from the University of Uppsala. Dalman became librarian of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a member of the Academy in 1821, then director of the zoological garden, then demonstrator in botany at the Karolinska Institutet of Stockholm.

Dalman's main interest lay in entomology and botany, but he also became involved in the systematics and taxonomy of trilobites. In 1771 Johann Ernst Immanuel Walch first used the term trilobite. Researchers had tried to link trilobites to extant groups such as chitons and various arthropods. Before Walch’s work this had led to great confusion. By 1820 the term “trilobite” was widely used, except by Dalman who suggested the term “palaeades”. Dalman had drawn attention to the weakly defined axial furrows in the Ordovician trilobite Nileus. The trilobite genus Dalmanites in the order Phacopida was named in his honour.