Max Beier

Not to be confused with Maximilian Beier.

Max Beier (6 April 1903 in Spittal an der Drau – 4 July 1979 in Vienna) was an Austrian arachnologist and entomologist.[1]

He studied zoology at the University of Vienna, and obtained his doctorate there in 1927.[2] He took up a post at the Natural History Museum in Vienna, in the same year, developing an expertise in pseudoscorpions.[2]

He was appointed Director of the zoological department of the Vienna Museum in 1962, and retired in 1968.[2]

A list of Beier's 398 scientific papers was published, with an obituary, in Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien.[3] 252 were on pseudoscorpions.[2] He described and named over 1200 pseudoscorpion species of which 1180 were still valid in 2007.[4]

He was editor of the Orthopterorum Catalogus and an updated edition of the volume on insects in the Handbuch der Zoologie.[2]

Awards

Beier was awarded the Fabricius Medal in January 1967 of Deutsche Gesellschaft für Allgemeine und Angewandte Entomologie (German entomology society).[2][5] In July 1968 he was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Innsbruck.[2]

Personal life

Beier and his wife, Irmgard were married in 1931.[2] His death on 4 July 1979[6] was unexpected.[2]

References

1. "Dr. Max Walter Peter Beier". Zoologisch-Botanische Datenbank (in German). Oberösterreichische Landesmuseen. December 1980. Archived from the original on 2013-11-11. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
2. Mahnert, Volker (1979). "Professor Dr Max Beier (1903–1979)" (PDF). Bulletin of the British Arachnological Society. 5: 115–116. ISSN 0524-4994.
3. Alfred Kaltenbach (December 1980). "Hofrat Professor Dr. Max Beier zum Gedenken" (PDF). Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien (in German). 83: 763–781. ISSN 0083-6133. JSTOR 41768843. Wikidata Q47036032.
4. Mark S. Harvey (21 December 2007). "The smaller arachnid orders: diversity, descriptions and distributions from Linnaeus to the present (1758 to 2007)*" (PDF). Zootaxa. 1668 (1): 363–380. doi:10.11646/ZOOTAXA.1668.1.19. ISSN 1175-5334. Wikidata Q97482889.
5. "Fabricius-Medaille - Willkommen!". www.dgaae.de (in German). Retrieved 2022-04-02.
6. Mahnert says 6 July, but other sources agree on 4 July

Further reading

• Beier, Max Walter Peter. In: The International Who's Who 1979–80. (1979)