Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn

Founded in 1872 as a private concern by Anton Dohrn, in 1982 the Stazione Zoologica came under the supervision and control of the Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica (Ministry of Universities and Scientific and Technological Research) as a National Institute.

Dohrn's idea was to establish an international scientific community provided with laboratory space, equipment, research material and a library.

"-"The Committee beg to report that since the last Meeting of the British Association at Liverpool steps have been taken by Dr. Dohrn to secure the moral assistance of some other scientific bodies, and that the Academy of Belgium has passed a vote acknowledging the great value of the proposed Observatories.

Besides this, the Government at Berlin has given instruction to the German Embassy at Florence and to the General Consul at Naples to do everything to secure success to Dr. Dohrn's enterprise.

In 1910 the 1874 building was occupied by the public aquarium and the library only, the department for collecting and preserving organisms as well as the individual laboratories for zoologists having been relocated in the 1886 addition.

The first assistants were zoologists Nicolaus Kleinenberg and Hugo Eisig and one of the Preparators was Salvatore Lobianco (Lo Bianco) (1860–1910), who wrote The Methods Employed at the Naples Zoological Station for the Preservation of Marine Animals.

Gross, morphology; Dr. Burian, comparative physiology; Dr. Henze, chemistry; Dr. Gast, the museum; Hermann Linden, secretary; Sig.

Included were Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz, Francis Balfour, Ray Lankester, August Weismann, Giovanni Battista Grassi, Antonio della Valle, Oskar Schmidt, Ambrosius Hubrecht (Professor of Utrecht University, an embryologist).

[3] The three publications issued by the Station were:- Mittheilungen der Zoologischen Station in Neapel, Zoologischer Jahresbericht a reference journal famous for its rapid publication and accuracy and Fauna und Flora des Golfes von Neapel an inventory of the biota of Mediterranean (in 1876 Anton Dohrn added a section of Botany), Charles Darwin had advised Dohrn that establishing a library would be unwise (Groeben, 1982, p. 29).

In 1987 Gaetano Salvatore, dean of the Medical School of Università Federico II in Napoli, was appointed president of the Stazione Zoologica.