18 Facts About Carl Chun

Carl Chun or Karl Friedrich Gustav Chun was a German marine biologist who worked as a professor at the University of Konigsberg, Breslau and at Leipzig.

Carl Chun spent much of his life studying the collections made during the expedition, and was responsible for discovering many marine organisms, including the vampire squid.

Carl Chun went to the Lessing Gymnasium and became interested in zoology from an early age thanks to the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt where he listened to lectures by Fritz Noll, Hermann Theodor Geyler, and Karl von Fritsch.

Carl Chun studied at the University of Gottingen and then at the University of Leipzig, receiving a doctorate in 1874.

Carl Chun became deeply interested in oceanic organisms and worked at the Naples Zoological Station where he studied and published a monograph on comb jellyfish under Anton Dohrn.

Carl Chun completed his habilitation in Leipzig and became a professor at the University of Konigsberg.

Carl Chun moved to Breslau in 1891 and succeeded Leuckart at Leipzig in 1898.

Deep sea exploration had been popularized by the British Challenger Expedition and the Germans, not to be left behind, funded Carl Chun's proposal made in 1897 at the meeting of the Deutsche Naturforscher und Aertze in Leipzig.

Carl Chun led the German deep sea expedition aboard the steamship SS Valdivia which left Hamburg on 1 August 1898.

In 1888, Carl Chun described seasonal vertical migration of oceanic organisms which has a periodicity of ca.

Carl Chun explained the seasonal disappearance of jellyfish and crustaceans from the upper pelagic layer of the ocean in terms of their migration to depths below 1000 m In contrast to diel vertical migration which occurs daily, SVM is still not well understood.

Carl Chun examined the distribution of phytoplankton with depth and demonstrated that although there were differences in distribution, they were not completely absent at any depth as had been claimed by the contemporary American zoologist Alexander Agassiz.

Carl Chun examined adaptations of the Schizopod eye in relation to depth and light penetration under the sea.

Carl Chun discovered and named the vampire squid.

Carl Chun was interested in making science accessible to larger audiences.

Carl Chun published in a popular narrative of the "Valdivia" expedition, Aus den Tiefen des Weltmeeres which captured the public imagination of the period.

Carl Chun married Lily, the daughter of Karl Vogt, whom he first met while working at the Naples Zoological Station in 1884.

Carl Chun suffered for several years after a deer trophy fell off the wall onto him in November 1908.