Max Carl Wilhelm Weber Scientist
Not to be confused with Max Weber.Max Carl Wilhelm Weber or Max Wilhelm Carl Weber (5 December 1852 in Bonn – 7 February 1937 in Eerbeek) was a German-Dutch zoologist and biogeographer.Weber studied at the University of Bonn, then at the Humboldt University in Berlin with the zoologist Eduard Carl von Martens (1831-1904). He obtained his doctorate in 1877. Weber taught at the University of Utrecht then participated in an expedition to the Barents Sea. He became Professor of Zoology, Anatomy and Physiology at the University of Amsterdam in 1883. In the same year he received naturalised Dutch citizenship.His discoveries as leader of the Siboga Expedition led him to propose Weber's line, which encloses the region in which the mammalian fauna is exclusively Australasian, as an alternative to Wallace's Line. As is the case with plant species, faunal surveys revealed that for vertebrate groups, except for birds, Wallace’s line was not the most significant biogeographic boundary. The Tanimbar Island group, and not the boundary between Bali and Lombok, appears to be the major interface between the Oriental and Australasian regions for mammals, and other terrestrial vertebrate groups. Thus, for many invertebrates, and birds and butterflies, this interface is better represented by Weber’s line than Wallace’s line.With G.A.F. Molengraaff, Weber gave names to the Sahul Shelf and the Sunda Shelf in 1919.
