Johann Wilhelm Meigen (3 May 1764 – 11 July 1845) was a German entomologist famous for his pioneering work on Diptera.
Life
Early years Meigen was born in Solingen, the fifth of eight children of Johann Clemens Meigen and Sibylla Margaretha Bick. His parents, though not poor, were not wealthy either. They ran a small shop in Solingen. His paternal grandparents, however, owned an estate and hamlet with twenty houses. Adding to the rental income, Meigen's grandfather was a farmer and a guild mastercutler in Solingen. Two years after Meigen was born, his grandparents died and his parents moved to the family estate. This was already heavily indebted due to the Seven Years' War when bad crops and rash speculations forced the sale of the farm and the family moved back to Solingen. Meigen attended the town school but only for a short time. He had learned to read and write on his grandfather's estate and he read widely at home as well as taking an interest in natural history. A lodger in the household, a state surveyor named Stamm, gave Meigen instruction in mathematics. Another family friend, a Reformed Church organist and teacher called Berger, gave him lessons from his 10th year on piano, orthography, and calligraphy. Later on, in 1776, he also taught him French. Meigen became Berger's assistant, going to Mülheim with him. There he saw for the first time a systematic collection of butterflies, and here he also learned how to collect and prepare insects. In the autumn of 1779 he returned to Solingen to help his parents, at first by giving private lessons in French, but in the following year he started a French school that lasted until early in 1784. During his few free hours in this period he studied history from Charles Rollin's 15-volume Roman History and that author's four-volume Ancient History (both in French). The only entomological work in his possession at this time was Moder's (or Kleemann's) Caterpillar Calendar. Later in 1784 he was recommended to Pelzer, a tradesman in Aachen, for the position of resident tutor. On taking up the post, he was treated as a family member. Pelzer had a cousin in Aachen by the name of Mathias Baumhauer (1759–1818), a wool merchant's son, who was a very able entomologist. Baumhauer had a butterfly collection including about 1200 species as well as numbers of insects of all other orders.
Early entomology Meigen's first attempts to identify his collection, which was mainly of Diptera, were made using a two-volume work by Philipp Ludwig Statius Muller, a German translation of Linnaeus's Natursystem published in the Netherlands by Houttyn. He soon made his first discovery; the Linnean genera were too inclusive and a better classification could be arrived at using wing venation. This conclusion had already occurred to both Moses Harris in England and Louis Jurine in Geneva, but at the time Meigen was unaware of this. Sensing an important step forward, he secured the works of Fabricius and from that time concentrated on Diptera. He soon found that wing venation alone was not enough to classify the Diptera correctly and he began to make drawings of the antennae viewed under a 20-power wooden-framed microscope purchased at the fair in Aachen. Using this, a lens of about 6-power, and his own very sharp eyesight and visual memory, Meigen arrived at his next important conclusion; that the Diptera could only be classified using character combinations. This is now known as an eclectic system.
Return to Solingen In 1786, the Solingen organist, a younger brother of his former teacher, Berger, died in Solingen. That position, with a French school connected with it, was offered to Meigen and he went back to Solingen. There he became closely acquainted with a man called Weniger, who shared his interests in botany and entomology. His enthusiasm for entomology and botany became broader and he decided to extend his studies to species from around the world. Weniger felt likewise and they contacted the banker and collector Johann Christian Gerning in Frankfurt. Gerning wrote to his son in the Netherlands, who bought insect specimens for him. A Swiss, Count von Meuron, who was in the Dutch service and whose brother was governor of Trincomalee on Ceylon, heard of their wishes and obtained for them the offer of positions as surgeons on an East Indiaman, with an additional stipend. This plan was given up when Meigen's mother opposed it.
To Burtscheid In 1792, Meigen took instruction in drawing. Then he was offered a teaching position in Burtscheid near Aachen. However, he could not leave Solingen because it was occupied by the French army during the Battle of Jemappes. Only when the French withdrew after the Battle of Neerwinden was he able to leave for Burtscheid and Aachen, where he then taught as well as collecting assiduously. In 1796, Meigen took a job teaching French in Stolberg, two hours from Aachen. Here he remained without further change of residence until his death. In Stolberg outside of school hours he taught drawing, geography, history and piano. He also met a brass-worker named J. A. Peltzer, who was a mathematician and owned a 60-power Tiedemann achromatic telescope. Soon Meigen was teaching astronomy as well. In 1801, Meigen met the French naturalist Count Lacépède who had come to Stolberg to visit the brass works. They talked about natural history and Meigen showed Count Lacépède his drawings of Diptera. The following day Meigen was asked to visit Count Lacépède, who asked him to join Capt. Baudin's voyage around the world as a botanist. Meigen declined. In 1802, Johann Karl Wilhelm Illiger, who must have heard of Meigen from Count Lacépède, and was at the baths in Aachen with Johann Centurius Hoffmannsegg, invited him to join them. Meigen took his drawings along and made arrangements with Illiger and Hoffmannsegg for future work. Illiger had captured a new and unknown dipteran and showed a pen drawing of it to Meigen, asking him how it should be classified. Meigen described it as Loxocera hoffmannseggi. Illiger also agreed to proofread Meigen's first work on Diptera which was then published in 1804 by Reichard in Braunschweig.
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