Oscar Werner TiegsFRSFAA (12 March 1897 – 5 November 1956) was an Australian zoologist whose career spanned the first half of the 20th century.[1][2][3]
His contribution to the division of the phylumarthropoda into two parts, one including insects, myriapods, and velvet worms, and the other including trilobites, crustaceans, and arachnids, is considered to be an important contribution to zoology. He was acknowledged as having a remarkable ability for apt and beautiful drawings, and as being an excellent microscopist, as having a great capacity for meticulous accuracy, persistent work, and shrewd elicitation of relationships from massive detail. He is considered one of Australia's great zoologists and as having a permanent place in the history of zoology.[1][2][3][4]
Oscar Tiegs' father, Prussian born Otto Theodor Carl Tiegs, and mother, Helene Caroline Ottilie, née Meyer, from Hanover, migrated to Australia from Germany. The Royal Society states that Otto Tiegs had careers in both pharmacy and engineering, and had a high regard for learning, while others state that he was a merchant.[1][2][3] In particular, in 1920 under oath, Otto Tiegs described himself as a merchant.[5]
Oscar Tiegs was born at Kangaroo Point, a suburb of Brisbane.[2][3] He had four younger sisters, two of whom died as infants.[6]
As a child, he was fascinated by insects and put together a collection of about one thousand named beetles, which was eventually taken in by the Queensland Museum. He described himself as a timid but industrious boy with an absorbing interest in insects, and acknowledged the support of the Queensland Governmententomologist, Henry Tyson.[1][2][3]
Commencing in March 1916[7] at the University of Queensland he studied science, specialising in biology under Thomas Harvey Johnston, where he received training in animal morphology. He was awarded his Bachelor of Science in 1919.[a][8] During his honours course, he produced his first research paper in 1918:[7] an anatomical study of the echiuroid worm (pseudobonelia). He received his Master of Science in 1921,[b][9][7] at the age of 25. He wanted to study medicine, but there was no medical school in Queensland, so instead continued into zoology.[1][3][4][10]
Tiegs was the first graduate of the University of Queensland to be awarded the degree of doctor of science.[7]
Adult life
On 14 August 1926, Oscar Tiegs married Ethel Mary Hamilton, a telephonist, at the Presbyterian Church in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn.[1][3]
Tiegs was known to form lasting friendships, even from relatively brief associations. For example, colleagues he met only once while on a trip to Europe in 1928, had fond memories of him. He was known as Sandy Tiegs to his friends and colleagues.[2][3]
Tiegs was always interested in learning and research, and was known to find administration and committee work distasteful.[1][2] This would appear to be at odds with his being a Councillor, and Chair of the Library Committee, for The Royal Society of Victoria.[13]
As head of the Melbourne University's Department of Zoology, he encouraged research and empowered his staff to set their own courses of activity with a directed freedom that nurtured world class research. He tended not to be interested in the research of others unless it was closely aligned with his own, yet was proud of his staff and was keen to show visitors what his staff were doing.[1][2]
He lectured without notes, mainly to first year students, to whom he gave a solid background in elementary zoology and comparative morphology, in a manner which was considered a model of presentation and clarity.[1][2] He gave special lectures on arthropodevolution and the vertebrate nervous system to senior students.[2] However, Oscar Tiegs' involvement in imparting knowledge started much earlier than his time at the University of Melbourne, he being a student demonstrator[e][14] in biology at the University of Queensland in 1918.[10][14]
Tiegs was elected in 1944 as a Fellow of the Royal Society, aged 47.[15]
The Melbourne University's zoological museum, now called the Tiegs Museum, owes much of the quality of its collection to Oscar Tiegs. He spent time and care improving and extending its holdings, based on his belief in the traditional morphological approach to zoology.[2]
Oscar Tiegs was a prodigious worker, and, for example, would take on extra lecturing duties during staff absences to not load his other staff,[2][3] and only in later years did he balance his time more out of work.[2] He was fond of music, in particular Beethoven and Mozart, and critically appreciated pictures.[2] These interests, of music, art, and literature[4] he shared with his wife Ethel.[1][3]
Some felt Oscar Tiegs, while honest, was direct to the point of bluntness,[2] and had a keen sense of humour.[4] He was known for supportive letters sent to friends during World War II, and the gift parcels sent by him and his wife.[2] Oscar Tiegs' geographical isolation, and his own diffidence probably prevented him from maximising his contribution to zoology,[3] although rather than diffidence others describe it as an unassuming disposition.[1] He is described as shy and reserved, preferring the laboratory to the committee meeting or social function.[4]
Oscar Tiegs' scientific interests and contributions ranged from the physiological analysis of nervous and muscular action to invertebrate embryology,[2][3] his studies being comparable to the very best work the last century.[3] He repeatedly turned from one area of research to another, only to return again.[2] He was a dedicated practiser of descriptive morphology during a period when the majority of biologists were turning to experimentation.[4]
Typically, even his first research paper, was to describe something unusually interesting, namely that the male of the echiuroid worm exhibits a greater degree of degeneration than other species, the tissues fusing with those of its female partner and the host.
Oscar Tiegs' doctoral thesis work was to be the basis for much of his later work,[2][3] in embryological studies, and the study of fine structures in muscle. He found clear evidence that the apparent striation of muscle fibres did not arise from separate disks, but from a helicoidal organisation within the fibre.[2] He also found a similar condition in vertebrate muscles.[23] Later he discovered that former histologists had recorded the same thing, but their observations had received little attention.[2] He contended that helicoidal striation is a general feature of muscles and that muscular conduction takes place along this helicoidal path, even though the evidence for this generality was against him, yet his cinematographic records supported his interpretation for arachnids and other arthropods.[2]
Between 1922 and 1934 Oscar Tiegs was almost entirely concerned with the physiology of nerve and muscle, apparently influenced by Brailsford Robertson.[2]
In 1925 he published the results of experiments regarding the importance of creatine.[24] This line of research was inspired by the lactic acid hypotheses of muscular action at the time and before phosphagen was discovered.[2]
Oscar Tiegs thus showed that the characteristic of being opisthogoneate, that is with posterior genital openings, and the characteristic of progoneate, that is with the genital opening differently placed, anteriorly, are not dichotomous, and thus reduced the significance of the until then corresponding major classificatory zoological division.[2] He proposed a new classification scheme based on head structure, this being supported by later work by others regarding antennal muscles, and locomotive behaviour and machinery in the relevant animals.[2]
At the time of his death in 1956, Oscar Tiegs left a full draft of a review on the evolution of arthropoda. Its final preparation and publication was undertaken by friends and colleagues.[2][3][38] Oscar Tiegs typically also known for this work.[4]
his work on insect embryology and metamorphosis, and the embryology of Symphyla;
his experimental studies on the innervation of skeletal muscle and the functional relation of the sympathetic system to muscle (Orbeli effect);
his histological work on muscle, especially the helicoidal structure of the striated muscle fibre;
and other research concerning: histology of the neurosynapse; innervation of teeth; chemical transmission at dorsal root nerve endings.
He was appointed to a Chair of Zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1948[m][41][1] which he held until his death, and became a full Professor in 1948.[1][3][10]
In 1951 Professor Wilfred Agar died and Oscar Tiegs became Professor and took over as head of the Melbourne University Zoological Department.[2]
Others[4] state that Oscar Tiegs took the Chair of Zoology at the University of Melbourne in 1948 upon the retirement of Professor Wilfred Agar.
In 1954 he took sabbatical leave[42] and travelled overseas a second time[1][3] supported by a British Council travel grant.[10][43] This second trip provided Oscar Tiegs with the opportunity to be formally admitted to the Royal Society,[44] after being elected as a Fellow 10 years earlier. While in England he also chaired a session of the Sixth Commonwealth Entomological Conference.[n][45] He also delivered a series of three lectures on the flight muscles of insects at the University of London during March 1954[46]
Clarke Medal
Reverse
Oscar Tiegs returned to his area of doctoral studies for what was to be his last research, an exhaustive study of the flight muscles of insects and other arthropod muscles published in 1955.[2][47] This analysis of the comparative myology and evolution of wide range of insect's flight muscles showed how such muscles evolved structurally at a histological level.[2] He showed that the histogenesis of muscle in orthoptera (butterflies, moths, etc.) and simpler insects by the repeated division of rudimentary muscle fibres, but in higher orders of insect, free individual myoblasts applicate to young muscle fibres laying down a new fibril, contributing sarcoplasm and nuclei.[2]
The University of Melbourne's zoological museum, established in 1887, is now named The Tiegs Museum after Oscar Tiegs. Oscar Tiegs was responsible for substantially improving the museum's collection, which was housed in its own room in the old Zoology Building. The room was called "The Tiegs Museum" and this title was now officially adopted, and followed the museum to its new location in the Zoology Department's new premises in 1988.[48]
Tiegs Place
Canberra, the national capital of Australia, names its streets after nationally significant people, places, and events.[49] Tiegs Place, a street in the suburb of Florey in Canberra, is named after Oscar Tiegs, notably for:[50]
Biologist; Walter and Eliza Hall Fellow in Economic Biology, 1920; on staff, Zoology Department, Queensland University; Lecturer, Melbourne University, 1925; David Syme Research Prize and Rockefeller Travelling Fellow, 1948; Fellow, Academy of Science; President, Section D meeting, ANZAAS, 1949; Dean of Faculty of Science, 1950–52; important research on insect metamorphosis; published numerous papers and articles.
Kangaroo Point Natural History Project
Included along a heritage trail through the CT White and James Warner parks at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, Queensland, are interpretive signs which commemorate the life and work of Oscar Tiegs as one of the pioneering scientists from the area.[51][52]
Publications
1922 Researches on the insect metamorphosis. Doctoral Thesis on the histology of metamorphosis of the Chalcid wasp, Nasonia.
1922 On the arrangement of the striations of voluntary muscle fibres in double spirals.
1938 Memoirs: The Embryonic Development of Calandra oryzae. (with Florence V. Murray) see Sitophilus oryzae the rice weevil.
1942 The ‘Dorsal Organ’ of the Embryo of Campodea.
1945 Memoirs: The Post-Embryonic Development of Hanseniella agilis (Symphyla).
1947 The development and affinities of the Pauropoda, based on a study of Pauropus silvaticus.
1955 The Path of the Slow Contractile Wave in Arthropod Muscle Fibre. (with E. Matthaei) Photographic records are consistent with the hypothesis that the slow waves move along the helicoid.
^Affidavit to the matter of Carl Louis Wilhelm Hoyer, plaintiff, Otto Theodor Carl Tiegs defendant, No. 218 of 1901, before Justice Cooper, sworn 26 May 1902
Ref: "Advertising". The Courier-mail. No. 3581. Queensland, Australia. 18 May 1948. p. 5. Retrieved 16 January 2022 – via National Library of Australia.
^ abcdLetter from University of Queensland Registrar to Oscar Werner Tiegs dated 1920-04-08; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/5
^ abLetter from University of Queensland Registrar to Oscar Werner Tiegs dated 1918-03-26; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/5
^ abJohnston, T. A. & Tiegs, O. W. 1922: New gyrodactyloid trematodes from Australian fishes together with a reclassification of the super-family Gyrodactyloidea. Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales, 47, 83–131.
^ abLetter from Registrar of the University of Adelaide to Oscar Werner Tiegs dated 1921-09-13; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/5
^ abBachelor of Science Certificate, University of Adelaide; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/3/1
^ abDoctor of Science Certificate, University of Adelaide; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/3/1
^"On the arrangement of the striations of voluntary muscle fibres in double spirals". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia. 46: 222. 1922.
^Tiegs, OW (1925). "The function of creatine in muscular contraction". Australian Journal of Experimental Biology and Medical Science. 2: 1. doi:10.1038/icb.1925.1.
^W E Agar; F H Drummond (1948). "Third report on a test of McDougall's Lamarckian experiment on the training of rats". Journal of Experimental Biology. 25 (2): 103. doi:10.1242/jeb.25.2.103.
^W E Agar; F H Drummond; M M Gunson (1954). "Fourth (final) report on a test of McDougall's Lamarckian experiment on the training of rats". Journal of Experimental Biology. 31 (3): 308. doi:10.1242/jeb.31.3.307.
^Master of Science Certificate, University of Melbourne; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/3/1
^ abcLetter from University of Melbourne Registrar to Oscar Werner Tiegs dated 1931-07-1931; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/5
^"The post-embryonic development and affinities of the pauropoda, based on a study of pauropus silvaticus". Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science. 88: 165. 1947.
^Letter from University of Melbourne Registrar to OScar Werner Tiegs dated 1947-06-16; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/5
^Report on Overseas Leave by Oscar Werner Tiegs to the University of Melbourne dated 27 April 1955; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/4
^Letter from British Council to Oscar Werner Tiegs dated 12 March 1953; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76/1/5
^Item 3 Agenda, Ordinary Meeting of the Royal Society of 1 April 1954; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076
^Letter from Director, Commonwealth Institute of Entomology to Oscar Werner Tiegs dated 1954-03-26; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076/76
^Brochure for series of special lectures, 1,2,3 March 1954; Basser Library, Australian Academy of Science, Manuscript Collection, MS076