75.1H'RENBERG, CHRISTIAN GOTTFRIED, one of the most distinguished naturalists of Germany, was b. April 19th, 1795, at Delitsch, in Prussian Saxony. Although he had been originally intended for the clerical profession, he early relinquished the study of theology in favor of medicine; and after having attended the classes at the medical faculty at Leipsic for two years, lie removed in 1817 to Berlin, where he graduated in medicine in 1818. His favorite study at this period was botany, and his earliest publica tions are devoted to botanical subjects, and more especially to such as demand the use of the microscope—an instrument with which the name and reputation of E. must remain inseparably associated; for to him belongs the merit of having rescued it from the discredit into which it hadlallen, and of having been one of the first fully to appre ciate its capabilities. In 1820, E. accompanied his friend Hemprich on his travels to the east; and after having visited Egypt,- Syria, and Arabia, returned, in 1826, to Berlin, where he was appointed to one of the medical chairs of the university, which he occu pied until his death. The three years which intervened before lie again set forth on a scientific expedition, were devoted to the arrangement and classification of some of the abundant materials which he had accumulated in his eastern travels; and to this period belong the composition of his Akalevhen des Rothen Meeres—which has largely con tributed towards our knowledge of the meduste—and his Symbolce Physicce. In 1829, E.
accompanied G. Rose and A. von Humboldt on an expedition to the and Altai mountains, in the course of which he collected materials for his numerous memoirs on the Infusoria, and for his great work Infusionsthierchen, published at Leipsic in 1838, which have identified his name with the history and study of this department of animal life. E. divided the infusoria into rotatoria (now found to belong to higher orders animal life) and polygastrica, which correspond more nearly with the infusoria as now admitted, although many of his polygastric organisms have been found to be vegetable structures, and some to be the larval forms of worms, etc. E.'s researches have not. been confined to living organisms, but include fossil infusoria; and his great work, Mikrologie, on the application of the microscope to geology, contains the results of his investigation in this department of inquiry. E. was a member of most of the scientific. bodies of Europe, and was for nearly fifty years an active contributor to the scientific literature of his country. He died Sept., 1876.