Richard Böhm

Richard Böhm was a German zoologist and explorer.

Life

Böhm was born on 1 October 1854, in Berlin, to Ludwig—a physician—and Franziska Louise Böhm. As a child, he received a copy of Brehms Tierleben for Christmas, which "became a source of unimagined pleasure" for the young Böhm. He studied zoology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena with the Darwinist Ernst Haeckel and attained a doctorate in 1877. His dissertation was on Helgoland leptomeduses. In April 1880, he and Paul Reichard went on an expedition to Zanzibar and then, in East Africa, the east bank of Lake Tanganyika and the southeast of Lake Upemba, which he discovered. His correspondence appeared in 1888 under the title Ostafrika, Sansibar und Tanganjika heraus: Von Sansibar zum Tanganjika, Briefe aus Ostafrika von Dr. Richard Böhm. Böhm wrote numerous articles in the Journal of Ornithology from 1882 to 1887. He was one of the first zoologists to research the animals between the East-African steppe and West-African forest and discovered numerous new species of birds. He died on 27 March 1884, aged 29, in Katapana, from malaria.