How to become museum director: lessons from the decisive years 1883 to 1887 and Karl August Möbius' appointment at the Zoological Museum in Berlin

Abstract

The single most important quantity determining the properties of sunspots and presumably starspots is their magnetic field. First an overview of the magnetic structure of sunspots is given, some of the progress made in recent years is described and some of the unsolved questions are pointed out. Both observational and theoretical aspects are dealt with. Finally, the magnetic structure of starspots is discussed. After presenting the evidence for (and against) their magnetic nature the signature of starspots in Zeeman Doppler images is described. It is pointed out that if the properties of sunspots are extrapolated to giant spots on rapidly rotating stars then the observed signature can be at least qualitatively explained.

“Give me a museum and I will fill it”. The first German Tropical Research Station at Ralum, Bismarck Archipelago, 1896-1897, in context of collecting for the Museum of Natural History Berlin

“…At that time Dahl was professor at the University of Kiel (for biographies see e.g. Bischof 1930; Volbehr & Weyl 1956;Leps 2001;Buschmann et al 2003;Schmitt 2010). Dahl, who had taken part in the Plankton Expedition of the marine biologist Victor Hensen, had previously breathed the wish to collect in New Guinea but never had the opportunity before.…”

“…A few years earlier the Museum fçr Naturkunde had moved into the new building in the Invalidenstraße and had finally enough space for large collections (see e.g. Glaubrecht 2008a, b;Schmitt & Glaubrecht 2010). Maebius planned to fill the Zoological Museum with valuable material representing the fauna from all over the world.…”

“…Dohrn and Maebius had known each other for years. Both being marine biologists, they were in regular contact about their research and had also had a brisk correspondence during the time a new director for the Berlin museum was searched and Maebius finally appointed (Schmitt & Glaubrecht 2010).…”

“…In the archives of the Museum of Natural History in Berlin we found and utilize here as documentation and illustration the correspondence between the former director Karl August Maebius (1825Maebius ( -1908 and one of its scientists, Friedrich Dahl (1856Dahl ( -1929; for biographies of Maebius see e.g. Leps (2001), Glaubrecht (2008a, c), Nyhart (2008), Van der Heyden et al (2012) and Schmitt & Glaubrecht (2010). These letters extant in the archives of the Berlin museum (see details under non-printed sources), covering Dahl's stay in Ralum from 1896 to 1897, and supplemented by documents held in archives in Kiel and Naples, allow us to reconstruct the history of this remarkable and unique project.…”

“…Helbig 2010;Schmitt & Glaubrecht 2010), one of the major aims of its first director Maebius was without doubt "to fill" it; thus, the title of the present paper paraphrasing a commonly known dictum accredited to the painter Pablo Picasso. In this context we here reconstruct the case of the Ralum station and Dahl's collections made there.…”