Misplaced Pages

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in German. (May 2015) Click for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Misplaced Pages. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing German Misplaced Pages article at ]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|de|Theodor Wolf}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Misplaced Pages:Translation.

Franz Theodor Wolf (February 13, 1841 – June 22, 1924) was a German naturalist who studied the Galápagos Islands during the late nineteenth century. Wolf Island (Wenman Island) is named after him. The peak Volcán Wolf on Isabela Island is also named after him. He was born at Bartholomä (in the Ostalbkreis).

He published his Ein Besuch der Galápagos-Inseln, Sammlung von Vortraegen fuer das deutsche Volk (“A Visit to the Galápagos Islands: A Collection of Presentations for the German People”) in 1892. His observations also include notes on the human population on the islands.

He is one of the protagonists of the Golden age of Ecuadorian botany which started in 1870 when Ecuadorian Ecuadorian President and aristocrat Gabriel García Moreno brought members of a German Jesuits Order to manage the National Polytechnic School and the Quito Astronomical Observatory. That consisted of Theodor Wolf, astronomer Juan Bautista Menten, José Kolberg, José Epping, Luis Dressel and botanist Luis Sodiro.

He had performed a geologic survey of mainland Ecuador, but unfortunately his collections were lost in storage.

Wolf’s observations, which became the standard interpretation of island geology, depicted the islands as exposed tops of oceanic volcanoes with a distinctly different composition from the volcanic mountains of South America.

As a botanist he described or co-described numerous species within the genus Potentilla.

He died in Dresden.

References

1. Vivero Lovato, David Alejandro (2018). "Padre Luis Sodiro S. J.: Importancia de su aporte al conocimiento de la botánica en el Ecuador y sus antecesores" (in Spanish). PUCE. Retrieved 18 November 2023.
2. Edward John Larson, Evolution’s Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands (Basic Books, 2001), 107.
3. Edward John Larson, Evolution’s Workshop: God and Science on the Galapagos Islands (Basic Books, 2001), 107.
4. IPNI List of plants described and co-described by Wolf
5. International Plant Names Index.  Th.Wolf.

External links

• Works by or about Theodor Wolf at the Internet Archive
• Observations of Theodor Wolf

This article about a German scientist is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• 1841 births
• 1924 deaths
• People from Ostalbkreis
• People from the Kingdom of Württemberg
• Galápagos Islands
• 19th-century German explorers
• 20th-century German geologists
• German naturalists
• 19th-century German botanists
• 19th-century German geologists
• German scientist stubs