1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hochstetter, Ferdinand Christian von

HOCHSTETTER, FERDINAND CHRISTIAN VON, Baron (1829–1884), Austrian geologist, was born at Esslingen, Würtemberg, on the 30th of April 1829. He was the son of Christian Ferdinand Hochstetter (1787–1860), a clergyman and professor at Brünn, who was also a botanist and mineralogist. Having received his early education at the evangelical seminary at Maulbronn, he proceeded to the university of Tübingen; there under F. A. Quenstedt the interest he already felt in geology became permanently fixed, and there he obtained his doctor’s degree and a travelling scholarship. In 1852 he joined the staff of the Imperial Geological Survey of Austria and was engaged until 1856 in parts of Bohemia, especially in the Böhmerwald, and in the Fichtel and Karlsbad mountains. His excellent reports established his reputation. Thus he came to be chosen as geologist to the Novara expedition (1857–1859), and made numerous valuable observations in the voyage round the world. In 1859 he was engaged by the government of New Zealand to make a rapid geological survey of the islands. On his return he was appointed in 1860 professor of mineralogy and geology at the Imperial Polytechnic Institute in Vienna, and in 1876 he was made superintendent of the Imperial Natural History Museum. In these later years he explored portions of Turkey and eastern Russia, and he published papers on a variety of geological, palaeontological and mineralogical subjects. He died at Vienna on the 18th of July 1884.

Publications.—Karlsbad, seine geognostischen Verhältnisse und seine Quellen (1858); Neu-Seeland (1863); Geological and Topographical Atlas of New Zealand (1864); Leitfaden der Mineralogie und Geologie (with A. Bisching) (1876, ed. 8, 1890).