Background
Giesbrecht was born in Gdańsk in 1854, and was educated in Kiel, where in 1881 he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Baltic copepods under Professor Karl Möbius.
Giesbrecht was born in Gdańsk in 1854, and was educated in Kiel, where in 1881 he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in Baltic copepods under Professor Karl Möbius.
He then moved to Naples to work at the zoological station there, staying there for the remainder of his life. His most famous work is the 1892 monograph Systematik und Faunistik der pelagischen Copepoden des Golfes von Neapel und der angrenzenden Meeres-Abschnitte ("Systematics and faunistics of the pelagic copepods of the Gulf of Naples and neighbouring seas"). In 1904, at the request of Anton Dohrn, Giesbrecht was made an honorary professor
He is commemorated in a number of species names:
Buntonia giesbrechti (G West Müller, 1894)
Onchocorycaeus giesbrechti (F Dahl, 1894)
Stenhelia giesbrechti T. & A. Scott, 1896
Pseudocyclopia giesbrechti Wolfenden, 1902
Xanthocalanus giesbrechti I. C. Thompson, 1903
Aetideus giesbrechti (Cleve, 1904)
Arietellus giesbrechti G. O. Sars, 1905
Conchoecetta giesbrechti (G West Müller, 1906)
Paramphiascopsis giesbrechti (G O Sars, 1906)
Harpacticus giesbrechti Klie, 1927
Pseudoclausia giesbrechti Bocquet & Stock, 1960
Candacia giesbrechti Grice & Lawson, 1977
Link to a Wilhelm Giesbrecht image gallery with examples of his illustrations of copepods.
