Broili, Ferdinand

(b. Mühlbach, Germany, 11 April 1874; d. Mühlbach, 30 April 1946)

paleontology, geology.

Ferdinand was the son of J. B. Broili, squire of the castle of Mühlbach, near Karlstadt. The family was of Italian origin; an ancestor had emigrated in 1741 from Treviso to Würzburg. At first Broili attended the village school in Mühlbach, then the Gymnasium in Würzburg. While still a child he collected his first fossils from a shell limestone quarry on the estate and thus became interested in geology. In 1894 Broili began his study of the natural sciences at the University of Würzburg. The following year he transferred to Munich, where he was the favorite student of the internationally renowned paleontologist Karl von Zittel, under whose guidance he received the Ph.D. in 1898 with a thesis on paleontology.

In 1899, after one year as assistant in the geology department of the Technische Hochschule of Munich, Broili became Zittel’s assistant at the State Paleontological Collection in Munich, which at that time was probably the most significant of its kind. In 1901 Zittel sent him to Texas, where he and the American Charles Sternberg successfully collected and investigated amphibian and reptile fossils of the Permian era. For nearly a decade he occupied himself extensively with the Permian fauna in Texas, and between 1904 and 1913 he published several works on his investigations, especially on saurians.

In 1903 Broili qualified as academic lecturer under Zittel, again with a paleontological work. When Zittel died in 1904, Broili was appointed the custodian of the State Paleontological Collection; in 1909 he became curator, and after 1908 he had the title of professor. In 1919 he was appointed director of the Institute for Paleontology and Historical Geology of the University of Munich, as well as director of the State Paleontological Collection. In 1904 he had married Emma Morneburg of Passau; they had one son and one daughter.

Broili’s main concern was paleontology, but he also participated in the geological investigations in the Bavarian Alps.

In paleontology, Broili was very active in many areas. In 1919 he began extensive investigations of the many fossils of the laminated lime formations of the upper Malm at Sonthofen and in Eichstätt, in Upper Franconia, most of them unique surviving fossils. He was especially successful in his investigations of winged reptiles, demonstrating that they had hairy coverings, and thus were warm-blooded, as well as that they had webbed skin and a pecten on the crown of the head. Broili did not allow his duties as director of the State Paleontological Collection to restrict his scientific work, but conducted manyfaceted investigations of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras. At the beginning of his career he had been active outside central Europe, and he continued foreign investigations in the 1920’s and the 1930’s, stimulating and organizing several expeditions to the Karroo formation in South Africa and also taking a leading part in the evaluation of the findings. In his investigations of fossils Broili did not stop at description and systematic explanation, but also attempted to depict the main life habits of the animals involved and succeeded in working out several excellent descriptions.

Broili also worked on the methodology of paleontology and developed fundamental methods for the evaluation of fossil deposits. As director of the State Paleontological Collection he continued Zittel’s pioneer work and greatly enlarged the collection, both in general scope and in number of local Bavarian specimens.

In 1930 he became editor-in-chief of the journal Paleontographica, and was coeditor of several other journals. He resigned from his various positions in 1939 and gave his full time to his private investigations, especially to devising a unified description of the amphibia, which remained unfinished. In 1943 Broili left Munich, where he had been active for so long, and spent the rest of his life in Mühlbach.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Although Broili’s writings have been only partially published, more than 100 scientific works, predominantly in paleontology, are in print. These are dispersed in many different journals and cover the years 1899–1942. Among his published works should be mentioned Die permischen Brachiopoden von Timor (Stuttgart, 1916); Paläozoologie (Systematik) (Berlin–Leipzig 1921); “Ein neuer Fund von Plesiosaurus aus dem Malm Frankens,” in Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Math.-nat. Abt., 30 (1926), Abh, 8; “Über Gemündina Stürtzi,” ibid., n.s. (1930), Abh. 6. The majority of Broili’s publications are found in Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Math.-nat. Abt. For bibliography, see Dehm and Schroeder (below).

II. Secondary Literature. Broili’s life and works were discussed during his lifetime by W. D. Matthew, “Notes on the Scientific Museums of Europe,” in Natural History, 21 (1921), 184–190. Obituary notices include R. Dehm and J. Schroeder, “Ferdinand Broili 1874–1946,” in Neues Jahrbuch für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie, Sec. B (1945–1948), pp. 257–271, with complete bibliography; B. Peyer, “Ferdinand Broili 1874–1946,” in Verhandlungen der Schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft (1946), 358–360; and D. M. S. Watson, “Ferdinand Broili,” in Nature, 158 (1946).

Hans BaumgÄrtel