Lang, Arnold

(b. Oftringen, Switzerland, 18 June 1855; d. Zurich, Switzerland, 30 November 1914)

zoology

Lang was the son of Adolf Lang, a cotton mill owner, who was also enthusiastically engaged in local politics. The family belonged to the Reformed Church.

Lang completed primary school in 1867 and district school in 1870. He then attended the cantonal school Aarau until 1873. Starting in March 1873 he studied science, especially Zoology, in Geneva and then, from 1874 to 1876, in Jena. After receiving the doctorate at Jena (1876), he qualified a privatdocent for zoology at Bern on 26 May 1876. In 1878 and 1879 he was the Swiss representative at the zoological station in Naples, where he remained as an assistant until 1885. In November of that year he went to Jena as privatdocent. In 1886, at the initiative of Ernst Haeckel, he was given the newly created post there of Ritter professor phylogenetic zoology.

In 1889 he accepted and appointment as full professor of zoology and comparative anatomy at the University of Zurich. In addition, he became professor of zoology at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule, took over the directorship of the zoological collections, and founded a zoological institute. Along with his teaching duties, Lang assumed many further responsibilites, including membership on the Zurich school council, and played an active role in Swiss scientific societies. In the last years of his life he successfully campaigned for the rebuilding of the University of Zurich. Poor health forced him to retire on 15 April 1914.

In religious matters Lang characterized himself as an agnostic freethinker. In 1887 he married Jeanne Mathilde Bachelin. They had one son and two daughters. Lang worked intensively, without long periods of relaxation. As a result his arteriosclerotic heart complaint steadily worsened. humorous and sociable, he was also musically and artistically gifted.

Lang became a corresponding member of the Société des Médecins et Naturalistes de Jassy in 1888 and of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in 1893. Furthermore, he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Sciences at Uppsala in 1901. and socius extraneus of the Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1910. Lang was honorary memeber of many learned societies and received honorary doctorates from both of Zurich’s universities.

Lang’s interest in zoology was awakened in Geneva by Karl Vogt, who in 1874 gave him a letter of introduction to Haeckel in Jena. At the latter’s suggestion Lang translated Lamarck’s Philosophie Zoologique into German. In later writings he repeatedly discussed Lamarck’s theory and questions pertaining to the history of the theory of evolution.

Lang’s zoological works grew out of his research at Naples under the direction of Dohrn were devoted to such topics as sessile crustaceas and the comparative anatomy and histology of the nervous system of the platyhelminths. He also wrote a monograph on the polyclads (marine turbellarians). In his popular Lehrbuc der vergleichenden Anatomie der Wirbellosen Tiere (1888-1894), which was translated into English and French, Lang provided a critical on annelid phylogeny, and especially through his derivation of metamerism and his trophocoel theory of the formation of the entire alimentary canal, Lang participated vigorously in the debate over the problem of the origin of the bodily cavties in general. Moreover, his hybridization experiments with species of the genus Helix confirmed Mendel’s results. Finally, he established an important basis for experimental genetics with his presentation of the “Anfangsgründe der Biometrik der Variation und Korrelation,” Which constituted a section of the compilation he published in 1914 under the title Die experimentelle Verebungslehre in der Zoologie seit 1900.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Lang’s writings include Die Polycladen (Seeplanarien) des Golfes von Neapel und der angrenzenden Meerasabschnitte (Leipzig, 1884); Mittel und Wege Phuylogenetischer Erkenntnis (Jena, 1887);Lehrbuch der vergleichenden Anatomie der wirbellosen Tiere, 4 pts. (Jena, 1888-1894; 2nd ed. 1901); Beiträge zu einer Trophocoeltheorie (Jene, 1903); Die experimentelle Verebungslehre in der Zoologie seit 1900 (Jena, 1914); and “Ausmeinem intimen Shuldbuch,” in H. Schmidt, ed., Waswir Ernst Haeckel verdanken, II (Leipzig, 1914), 259-265.

II. Secondary Literature. See E. Haeckel, K. Hescheler, and H. Eisig, Aus dem Leben und Wirken von Arnold Lang (Jena, 1916); and G. Uschmann, Geschichte der zoologie und der zoologischen Anstalten in Jena 1779-1919 (Jena, 1959), 112-113, 177-182.

Georg Uschmann