Hermann Loew

Friedrich Hermann Loew (19 July 1807 – 21 April 1879) was a German entomologist who specialised in the study of Diptera, an order of insects including flies, mosquitoes, gnats and midges.

Here he was private tutor to Prince Biron heir to the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia and the young Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Albrecht von Graefe (1828–1870) later one of the most famous oculists of all times.

In 1834 Loew was appointed superior teacher (Oberlehrer) at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Posen, known today as St. John Cantius High School in Poznań, Poland where he taught mathematics and natural history.

Several of Loew's pupils at Posen became scientific celebrities, the most notable being the philosopher Kuno Fischer (1824–1907) and the mathematicians Leo Königsberger (1837–1921) and Lazarus Immanuel Fuchs (1835–1902).

He belonged to Heinrich von Gagern's Imperial Party, a grouping which fostered Liberalism in Germany and pursued a policy of fusion for the German states.

While at Mesritz Loew gave up politics so as not to be in conflict with the educational department, and resisted offers of a seat in the Prussian Landtag (Federal state parliament) for the district of Mesritz-Bomst.

The imminent end of Loew was signaled on a summer holiday in Blankenburg in Thuringia when he had a paralytic stroke after which he sought treatment in the Diaconissen-Haus in Halle, Saxony, and died on 21 April 1879.

Something of his nature can be judged from his refusing to eat warm food to pay off the loans incurred during his education, and from his extraordinary calligraphy, with its machine-like precision.

Although predominantly a describer — delineating the taxonomically useful characters of more than 4,000 species mainly from the Palaearctic and North America, but also from the Afrotropics and the Far East — Loew made important contributions to higher taxonomy.

There is also material collected in (not by Loew): "Brasilien, Bismark Arch[ipelago] Ralum, Bogota, Columbien, Chile, Venezuela, Cuba, Carolina, Chile, Sumatra, Soekaranda, Montivide[o], Askhaabad, Transcaspian, Amboine, Klein-Asien-Asia Minor, Arab fel., Andalusia, Griechenland, Santiago, Lapland, N. Kamerun Cameroons, Kaukasus, Texas, Aegyptea".