16 Facts About Eduard Suess

Eduard Suess is responsible for hypothesising two major former geographical features, the supercontinent Gondwana and the Tethys Ocean.

Eduard Suess was born on 20 August 1831 in London, England, the oldest son of Adolph Heinrich Suess, a Lutheran Saxon merchant, and mother Eleonore Friederike Zdekauer.

Adolph Heinrich Suess was born on 11 March 1797 in Saxony and died on 24 May 1862 in Vienna; Eleonore Friederike Zdekauer was born in Prague, now part of the Czech Republic, which once belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and the Austrian Empire.

When Eduard Suess was an infant, his family relocated to Prague, and then to Vienna when he was 14.

Eduard Suess became interested in geology at a young age.

In 1855, Eduard Suess married Hermine Strauss, the daughter of a prominent physician from Prague.

Eduard Suess gradually developed views on the connection between Africa and Europe.

Eduard Suess claimed in 1885 that land bridges had connected South America, Africa, India, Australia, and Antarctica, creating a supercontinent which he named Gondwanaland.

Eduard Suess published a comprehensive synthesis of his ideas between 1885 and 1901 titled Das Antlitz der Erde, which was a popular textbook for many years.

Eduard Suess's theory was based upon glossopteris fern fossils occurring in South America, Africa, and India.

Eduard Suess's explanation was that the three lands were once connected in a supercontinent, which he named Gondwanaland.

Again, this is not quite correct: Eduard Suess believed that the oceans flooded the spaces currently between those lands.

Eduard Suess was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1886 and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1895.

Eduard Suess received the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London in 1896 and he won the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1903.

Eduard Suess is buried in the town of Marz in Burgenland, Austria.

Eduard Suess is considered one of the early practitioners of ecology.