EHRENBERG, CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED (1795 187 6), German naturalist, was born at Delitzsch in Saxony on April 19, 1795. After studying at Leipzig and Berlin, where he took the degree of doctor of medicine in 1818, he was appointed professor of medicine in the university of Berlin (1827). Mean while in 1820 he was engaged in a scientific exploration conducted by General von Minutoli in Egypt. They travelled in the Libyan desert, the Nile valley and the northern coasts of the Red Sea, and subsequently in Syria, Arabia and Abyssinia. Some results of these travels and of the important collections that had been made were reported on by Humboldt in 1826; and afterwards Ehrenberg produced Symbolae physicae (2 vols. 1828-1834), in which many particulars of the mammals, birds, insects, etc., were made public. In 1829 he accompanied Humboldt through eastern Russia to the Chinese frontier. On his return he undertook microscopical researches of the infusorial earths used for pol ishing and other economic purposes; and of the microscopic organ isms of chalk formations, and of the modern marine and fresh water accumulations. Ehrenberg showed that considerable masses of rock were composed of minute forms of animals or plants. He demonstrated also that marine phosphorescence was due to organisms. He died in Berlin on June 27, 1876.
He wrote also Die Inf usionsthierchen als vollkommene Organismen (2 vols., Leipzig, 1838) ; Mikrogeologie (2 vols., Leipzig, 1854) ; and "Fortsetzung der mikrogeologischen Studien," in Abhandl. der k. Akad. der Wissenschaft (1875). See Lane, Christian Gottfried Ehren berg, ein Vertreter deutscher Naturforschung (1895).