1913-14.] 
Obituary Notices. 
269 
OBITUARY NOTICES. 
Dr A. C. L. G-. Giinther, M.A., Ph.D., M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., etc. 
By William C. MTntosh. 
(Read June 15, 1914.) 
The death of Dr Albert Charles Lewis Gotthilf Giinther, who was elected 
to the Honorary Fellowship of this Society in 1895, has deprived science of 
the most distinguished ichthyologist of his day, and one whose labours in 
other departments of zoology were no less noteworthy. He was born in 
Esslingen in South Germany on the 3rd October 1830, his father being 
“ Siftungs-Commissar ” in Esslingen and “ Estates-Bursar ” in Mohringen, 
a descendant of a family which had been known in the locality for hundreds 
of years — indeed the Swabian branch of the Gunther family was settled in 
and about Mohringen on the Filder Plateau at the beginning of the fifteenth 
century. His mother was Eleonora Nagel, whose family originally came 
from Bremen. Albert was the eldest son, and was sent for his early 
education to the Gymnasium at Stuttgart (1837-47); and subsequently he 
studied at the Universities of Tubingen (1847-52, 1856-57), Berlin (1853), 
and Bonn (1854-55), thus gaining a wide experience of University life and 
a breadth of culture which had an important influence on his future career. 
Descended from a line of clergymen, family tradition destined him for the 
ministry of the Lutheran Church, for which, indeed, he was trained at the 
Theological College of Tubingen, and for which he passed the qualifying 
examination. His natural bent, however, was wholly in another direction, 
and, after taking the degree of Ph.D. in 1852, he decided to study science 
and medicine, taking the degree of M.D. at the same University in 1862. 
Before this, however, he had chosen zoology as the field of his labours, and 
had published his first paper on a Distome as well as a treatise on Fische des 
Neckars, with the coloured figure of a form new to the river (1853), and a 
Randbuch der medicinischen Zoologie (1858). Visiting England in 1855, he 
met Sir Richard Owen and Dr John Edward Gray, who had been interested in 
the former work, and a friendship sprang up between them — resulting in the 
selection of Dr Giinther, in October 1857, to arrange and describe the Fishes, 
Amphibians, and Reptiles in the British Museum ; as well as to prepare 
