Gerd Heinrich
| Gerd Hermann Heinrich | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 7, 1896 Berlin, Germany |
| Died |
December 16, 1984 Farmington, Maine, United States |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Entomologist |
Gerd Hermann Heinrich (born 7 November 1896, Berlin – died 16 December 1984, United States) was a German entomologist and ornithologist known for his studies of parasitic Hymenoptera of the Ichneumonidae family and for the description of several bird species in Celebes, Dutch East Indies.
Heinrich was born on 7 November 1896 in Berlin. He was the son of a physician, Hermann Heinrich. His mother, Margarethe von Tepper-Ferguson, was the heiress of a 1,344 ha farm at Borowke, between Poznan and Gdańsk, Poland. Heinrich grew up at Borowke which, prior to 1918, was in West Prussia. He was educated at home by a tutor until age eight and became fluent in Polish, German and Latin. In 1914, Heinrich graduated primus omnium from the Askanische Gymnasium in Berlin. Heinrich planned a career in medicine, but his interest was in natural history, especially insects. He sought the advice of the curator of entomology at the Museum für Naturkunde and was guided towards study of parasitic wasps of the family Ichneumonidae, a large, diverse, and at that time, taxonomically poorly known group of insects. Heinrich's education was interrupted by the onset of hostilities of World War I. He enlisted in the German army as a cavalryman fighting on the Eastern front and earned the Iron Cross he then transferred to the Luftstreitkräfte and became a pilot. After the war, Heinrich returned to Borowke, married a local girl, Annaliese Machatchek and lived there with his family.
In 1927, Heinrich made an expedition to Mount Elbrus in Northern Persia. From 1930 to 1932, he visited the island of Sulawesi (Celebes) in Indonesia, including the Latimodjong mountains, Menkoka mountains, and Minahasa and the Molucca Islands including Halmahera and Batjan. From 1932 to 1937, Heinrich studied at the Humboldt University in Berlin and in 1932, he published a travelogue about Celebes. In 1934, Heinrich published his first major work, Die Ichneumoninae von Celebes (1934). In 1935, he made an expedition to the Balkan Mountains and the Rhodope Mountains in South-Eastern Europe. In 1938, he published the results of processing his collection of materials of the Ichneumoninae of Madagascar in Les Ichneumonides de Madagascar (1938).
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