Faculty of Biology , University of Amsterdam &
Research Group in Ecological Morphology,
Leiden University, The Netherlands
(Click on the title image and on further images to see them enlarged)
Introduction Biography up to 1900
It is shown that the pinnacle of Max Weber's scientific career was the organization and leadership of the Siboga Expedition to the former Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) in the years 1899-1900.Before that time, as Professor of both general and special Zoology at the University of Amsterdam, he had devoted his research mainly to the anatomy of mammals, which resulted in the fundamental reference work Die Säugetiere published in first edition in 1904.
Just before his departure with the Siboga Expedition Weber was appointed extraordinary Professor of special Zoology in Amsterdam. This gave him more time to edit the results of the Siboga Expedition and for taxonomic studies, especially on the fishes of the Indo-Australian Archipelago. Nevertheless he kept a keen interest in general zoology, which resulted in his extensive contribution to the modern textbook Lehrbuch der Biologie für Hochschulen co-authored by Moritz Nussbaum and Georg Karsten, published in1911.
Weber retired in 1921 and by the time he died in 1937 about 95% of the scientific results of the Siboga Expedition had been published -- an outstanding achievement.
Only rarely a historical landmark coincides with the turn of a century. Nevertheless, in the history of natural history the year 1900 is marked by two important events: Firstly, the rediscovery of Mendel's laws by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns, and Erich Tschermak should be mentioned; subsequently, the Amsterdam Professor of Botany Hugo de Vries (1848-1935) developed the mutation theory, thereby laying one of the foundations of modern biology (Van der Pas, 1976).Secondly, the turn of the last century is marked by the Siboga Expedition to the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). This famous marine biological expedition was led by a colleague of Hugo de Vries: the Amsterdam Professor of Zoology Max Wilhelm Carl Weber, born 1852. These were golden times for the University of Amsterdam, especially in the Faculty of Science, as the physicist Pieter Zeeman (1865-1943) was honoured with the Nobel prize in 1902, simultaneously with his colleague from Leiden, Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928).
Max Wilhelm Carl Weber published most of his more than 150 scientific writings simply under the name Max Weber, and for this reason he should not be confused with the, also German-born, Max Weber (1864-1930), now renowned as the founder of sociology.
To return to the Siboga Expedition as a landmark in natural history, we quote from a short notice published on the occasion of the celebration of Weber's 70th birthday in Nature , 9 December 1922, by William Thomas Calman:
"An enterprise of a very different kind carried out under Max Weber's personal leadership was the exploration of the Malayan seas in the years 1899 and 1900 by the Dutch steamship Siboga . The stately series of reports on this expedition, which have been appearing under his editorship since 1902, form a contribution to the science of the sea scarcely surpassed in importance save by those of the Challenger expedition. Dealing with only a restricted area of the ocean, but paying far more attention to the fauna and flora of the shallower waters than the naturalists of the Challenger were able to do, it is not too much to say that the Siboga expedition has given a new aspect to many problems of the distribution of marine animals in tropical seas."
In the following we shall give a short survey of Weber's life and scientific work, culminating in the landmark of his personal scientific career: the Siboga Expedition.
Biography up to 1900
Max Weber was born at Bonn on December 5, 1852. His mother, Wilhelmina van
der Kolk, was Dutch and his father, Hermann Weber (an art dealer) was German.
Unfortunately, his father died just before he was two years old and Professor
Clemens Theodor Perthès, a friend of his father, acted as guardian to
the child. At the age of nine, Perthès sent him to a boarding school at
Oberstein an der Nahe, and there he installed his first museum in a cupboard,
as many boy-naturalists do. He passed on to the Progymnasium at Neuwied, where
Dr. Eben, a dedicated teacher in whose house the boy was boarded, he became a
field botanist. Next he attended the Gymnasium at Bonn. After having passed
his final examination he paid a visit to his relatives in Holland.
Weber was bilingual: he spoke German and Dutch fluently. Nevertheless, his
entire scientific education took place in Germany. In 1873 he entered the
University of Bonn, and attended the lectures in natural history of Franz
Hermann Troschel, A. de la Valette St. George, and especially from Franz
Leydig, whose assistant he became and to whom he owed his lifelong love of
comparative anatomy. During the winter of 1875-76 Weber studied in Berlin
under the zoologist Eduard von Martens, who had travelled and collected in the
East. This teacher inspired Weber with the ambition to travel and explore.
During these years in Bonn and Berlin Weber was a medical student as well as a
student of natural history, and he took a medical degree, as the naturalists of
those days usually did. He returned to Bonn in 1877 and there took his Ph. D.
with a thesis on the musculature of the eye and its innervation in native
Lacertidae. After his medical qualifying examination on 25 January 1878, he
did his year of military service, acting half as medical officer and half as
hussar. In 1879 came an invitation from Professor Max Fürbringer of
Amsterdam to become his Prosector in Anatomy and one year later another
invitation came from Utrecht, to become "Lector" in Anatomy under Professor
Koster. In 1883, Koster's health failing, the ordinary professorship in
anatomy was about to be offered to Weber, when an offer came to him from
Amsterdam to be Professor-Extraordinarius of Zoology, Comparative Anatomy and
Comparative Physiology. The temptations of Amsterdam, especially the famous
zoological garden of the Royal Zoological Society Natura Artis Magistra
with all its promise of anatomical work, carried the day. Thus, at the age of
30 he was a professor already.
In 1881 Weber had made a voyage to the Barents Sea in a little schooner 75
feet (23 m) long, the Willem Barents. She was built with private funds
for this expedition but manned by Dutch Naval officers and named after Willem
Barents who had discovered Spitsbergen at the end of the 16th century. The
Challenger had not long come home, and Weber, like many another young
naturalist, was longing to go fishing in unexplored seas with dredge and trawl
(as a matter of fact, he took the initiative to offer himself both as
naturalist and as medical officer for this expedition). He collected as much
as he could from aboard so small a ship, apart from taking the watch with the
other officers and acting as Doctor to the crew. He had a good reputation in
the Dutch Navy and his standing with the Navy was later shown by the Siboga
Expedition under Naval Commander G. F. Tydeman. After their marriage the
Webers spent three summer holidays in northern Norway, he mostly to dissect
whales, she to study corallines or calcareous Algae, on which she was even
then already becoming the chief authority.
Weber's great experience in the comparative anatomy of mammals is recorded in
his Studien über Säugethiere , of which the first part was
published in 1885. In this work he applied comparative anatomy to whales.
According to the cetaceologist Everhard Johannes Slijper (1936: 3), Weber,
together with Willy Kükenthal and his school, may be called the founder of
the comparative anatomy of Cetacea. At the end of his book Weber came to the
following conclusion about the origin of Cetacea: they possess juxtaposited
characters relating them to Carnivora, especially Pinnipedia, and also such as
point to Ungulata. Note that Weber was thus a Darwinist; in his lectures on
adaptation, he even seems to be a Lamarckian.
The second part of Studien über Säugethiere was published in
1898. This work was overshadowed by his handbook on mammals Die
Säugetiere published in 1904, of which the second edition, written in
collaboration with H. M. de Burlet and O. Abel, is still a much consulted
reference work (Weber, 1927-28; facsimile reprint published 1967; Russian
translation of the part on primates published 1936). Above all, he owed his
knowledge of the anatomy of rare and valuable animals to the specimens that
died in the Amsterdam zoological garden Natura Artis Magistra. These
animals were immediately dissected by him with great skill and prepared for the
Zoological Museum, of which he was appointed in 1892 as the first director (De
Meijere, 1932: 515; Sunier, 1949: 11).
Weber was a many-sided man and every branch of natural history claimed his
attention. Thus, his interest was not restricted to mammals; on the contrary,
he published on nearly every animal group, including Porifera, Coelenterata,
Platyhelminthes, Arthropoda, Mollusca, and all five classes of vertebrates.
Though anatomy and systematics were the principal topics, zoogeography,
ecology, physiology, and even ethnography also had his attention. His interest
in zoogeography was aroused by a voyage to the Netherlands East Indies
(Sumatra, Java, Celebes, and Flores) in 1888. After his return home Weber
published the results of this expedition in Zoologische Ergebnisse einer
Reise in Niederländisch Ost-Indien (Weber, 1890-1907). In the
preface to this work, Weber tells us what he aimed at during this voyage and
cites in the first place the study of the freshwater fauna, which had until
then been an almost entirely neglected subject. He concluded that a careful
study of this fauna might throw new light on the difficult problem of the
distribution of animals in the Indo-Australian Archipelago and their relation
to either the Indian continent or Australia. The Zoologische Ergebnisse
appeared in four volumes and contained several papers by Max Weber but also
some from different men of science among whom was his old master Eduard von
Martens.
Lecturing, sectioning, and working out the booty of the Indo-
Australian voyage filled the years from 1889 up to 1894 when the Webers left
for a voyage to South Africa. The main object of this voyage was again the
freshwater fauna, but the time of their visit proved to be most unfavourable
because the rains had not yet come and many rivers carried little water or had
completely run dry. Nevertheless, they enjoyed the trip, bargaining with
Bushmen and Hottentots for ethnographic items, exchanging tobacco and calico
for any animal they might bring. It was their wish to return once again to
South Africa, but that desire was never fulfilled. The results of this
expedition were published in the Zoologische Jahrbücher.
The main references for this section include: Thompson (1938), De
Beaufort (1937) and an unpublished biography up to 1898 by Anna Weber-van Bosse
in the archives of the Artis Library, University of Amsterdam. For other short
biographies, see Pieters & De Visser, 1985.
In the same year Weber took out papers of naturalization (the actual record of
naturalization was registered 27 December 1887; Pieters & De Visser, 1985)
and married Anna Antoinette van Bosse, a wealthy widow of his own age (born 27
March 1852 in Amsterdam). Both were about 40 years old on the photograph
reproduced in Fig. 1.
During her brief widowhood she had been a diligent pupil
of Hugo de Vries and was on her way to become a skilful and learned botanist,
specializing in marine Algae. She proved herself the perfect wife and helpmate
as well (it was a very happy marriage indeed) and she accompanied him during
all his travels and expeditions after their wedding (Koster & Van Benthem
Jutting, 1942). 
Meanwhile, as early as 1884, Weber had been appointed Ordinary Professor of
Zoology, Comparative Anatomy and Comparative Physiology in Amsterdam. The
dissections he made of all kinds of animals, explaining all the while to the
students what they saw and ought to know, excited the admiration of his pupils
who became devoted to him. On a large painting "An anatomical lesson" by Louis
Stracké, dated 1886 (Fig. 2),
we see Weber dissecting a lioness,
surrounded by some of his most talented pupils: Jacobus Marinus Janse (later
Professor of Botany at Leiden), Johannes Theodorus Oudemans (later University
Lecturer of Entomology in Amsterdam), and Friedrich August Ferdinand Christian
Went (later Professor of Botany in Utrecht) (cf. Scheller, 1985).
(editing for html p.c.diegenbach )