Johann Rudolph Rengger

Johann Rudolph Rengger was a Swiss naturalist and medical doctor, born in Baden and orphaned young, after which his uncle Albrecht Rengger, interior minister of the Helvetic Republic, paid for his education. He studied natural sciences and medicine in Lausanne and Tübingen, and in 1817 he published physiological investigations on the animal housekeeping of insects and took his medical doctorate. In 1818 he sailed from Le Havre for South America with the doctor Longchamp, and from 1819 he lived for about six years in Paraguay, where he explored the country and studied its animals, often keeping and raising them to learn about their behaviour. His account of the journey, Reise nach Paraguay in den Jahren 1818 bis 1826, appeared in 1835, after his early death in 1832.