Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson

Wilhelm Ferdinand Erichson (26 November 1809 to 18 December 1848) was a German entomologist and medical doctor. He was the author of many articles about insects, mainly in the Archiv für Naturgeschichte, and when writing in Latin he latinised his first name to Guillelmus, appearing as Guil. F. Erichson or G. F. Erichson. In 1842 he wrote a paper on insect species collected at Woolnorth in Tasmania, Australia, which was the first detailed research published on the biogeography of Australian animals and was very influential in raising scientific interest in Australian fauna. From 1834 to 1848 he was curator of the Coleoptera collections at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, and his classification of the Scarabaeidae is nearly identical to the modern one.