Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München, Germany
In 1898, Ferdinand Broili received the Doctor of Philosophy degree with a dissertation on Eryops megacephalus, titled Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis von Eryops megacephalus.
Gallery of Ferdinand Broili
Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Sanderring 2, 97070 Würzburg, Germany
In 1894 Ferdinand Broili began his study of the natural sciences at the University of Würzburg, but the following year he transferred to Munich.
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München, Germany
In 1898, Ferdinand Broili received the Doctor of Philosophy degree with a dissertation on Eryops megacephalus, titled Ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis von Eryops megacephalus.
Connections
colleague: Charles Hazelius Sternberg
McKittrick Oil Field, Kern County, California, United States
Charles H. Sternberg collecting a fossil horse skull at the McKittrick oil field, California.
Ferdinand Broili was a German scientist, who served as a professor of palaeontology at the University of Munich for over 20 years. He also was a director of the Institute for Paleontology and Historical Geology of the University of Munich, as well as director of the State Paleontological Collection.
Background
Ethnicity:
Ferdinand Broili's family was of Italian origin; an ancestor had emigrated in 1741 from Treviso to Würzburg.
Ferdinand Broili was born on April 11, 1874, in Mühlbach (part of Bad Neustadt), Bavaria, Germany, the son of J. B. Broili, squire of the castle of Mühlbach, near Karlstadt.
Education
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 Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1898 with a thesis on paleontology.
In 1899, after one year as an 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 an 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 a director of the Institute for Paleontology and Historical Geology of the University of Munich, as well as director of the State Paleontological Collection.
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 many-faceted 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 1920s and the 1930s, 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 a number of local Bavarian specimens.
In 1930 he became editor-in-chief of the journal Paleontographica, and was co-editor 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.
Ferdinand Broili was a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (now the Russian Academy of Sciences) and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Connections
In 1904 Ferdinand Broili married Emma Morneburg of Passau; they had one son and one daughter.