Franz Martin Hilgendorf

Franz Martin Hilgendorf (5 December 1839 – 5 July 1904) was a German zoologist and paleontologist. Hilgendorf's research on fossil snails from the Steinheim crater in the early 1860s became a palaeontological evidence for the theory of evolution published by Charles Darwin in 1859.
Life and work
Franz Hilgendorf was born on 5 December 1839 in Neudamm (Mark Brandenburg). Between 1851 and 1854 he went to a gymnasium in Königsberg (Neumark) and later to the Gymnasium Zum Grauen Kloster (Grey Monastery) in Berlin where he graduated in 1858. In 1859 he started studying philology at the University of Berlin. After four semesters he changed to the University of Tübingen. In the summer of 1862 he joined an excavation by Friedrich August Quenstedt in the Steinheim crater. In 1863 Hilgendorf received his Ph.D. for work related to this excavation. He finished his research on the fossils during his time at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. in 1868 Hilgendorf became...