Engelmann would eventually join thirty-three science societies. He 
was a charter member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and 
remained active in that most eminent organization for many years. When 
Engelmann died in 1884, the Academy of Science dedicated an issue 
of its journal, Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, 
to his memory. Enno Sander, a fellow Academy member, wrote in that 
issue that Engelmann had done ‘‘more than any other member for the 
establishment of [the Academy’s] fame and reputation among the scien- 
tific world.’’!! 
Like George Engelmann, Friedreich Adolphus Wislizenus earned 
a reputation as an accomplished observer of Western natural history. 
Wislizenus was born in Thuringia, Germany, in 1810. When his parents 
died of typhoid, the four-year-old Wislizenus went to live with a maternal 
uncle, a physician, who saw that his nephew received a good gymnasium 
education. 
After completing his gymnasium course, Wislizenus attended the 
universities in Jena, Goettingen, and Wurzburg. He suspended his 
university career, however, to join a revolutionary uprising against the 
German government, which at the time consisted of a loose union of 
independent states known as the German Confederation. In 1833 he took 
part in the unsuccessful storming of the Federal Diet, the Bundestag, 
in Frankfurt. Unlike many of his fellow revolutionaries, who were caught 
and sent to prison after being routed in Frankfurt, Wislizenus managed 
to elude capture. He fled to Strasbourg and from there to the safety 
of Switzerland. 
Wislizenus made the best of his exile to Switzerland by entering 
the newly-formed University of Zurich. He had only been there at short 
while, however, before once again joining a revolutionary cause—a 
movement to aid Giuseppe Mazzini in his bid to overthrow the Italian 
monarchy. This scheme met with no more success than the raid that 
forced Wislizenus to flee Germany. The expedition mounted by the Maz- 
zini sympathizers was met at the border by Swiss troops and forced 
to disband, whereupon Wislizenus laid down his gun and went back 
to Zurich to concentrate on learning. 2 
At the University of Zurich, Wislizenus attacked his studies with 
the same zeal as he had his political adversaries although fortunately 
he esteemed the faculty more than he did either the German Confederacy 
or the Italian monarchy. Wislizenus’ professors were some of Europe’s 
most knowledgeable scientists, including the naturalist Johann Schoelein 
and Lorenz Oken, the founder of the first German Congress of Natu- 
ralists and Physicians. Under the tutelage of such mentors, Wisli- 
zenus learned almost as much about the natural sciences as he did about 
medicine, his major field of study. He graduated with honors in 1834. 
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