Alfred Kahl

Alfred Kahl
Born18 February 1877 (1877-02-18)
Warwerort, Germany
DiedNovember 1946(1946-11-00) (aged 69)
NationalityGerman
Scientific career
FieldsNaturalist
Title page of Alfred Kahl's 4-volume compendium on ciliates, Wimpertiere oder Ciliata, 1930-35

Alfred Detlef Fritz Kahl (18 February 1877 – November, 1946) was a German schoolteacher who took up microscopy in mid-life and became a leading authority on ciliated protozoa. In a burst of scientific productivity that lasted just nine years, he published 1800 pages of scholarly work, in which he described 17 new ciliate families, 57 genera, and about 700 previously unknown species. During his brief career as a protozoologist, he redescribed and illustrated nearly all the species of ciliates known in his time, and fit them into a taxonomic scheme that remains influential today.[1][2]

  1. ^ Foissner, Wilhelm. Life and Legacy of an Outstanding Ciliate Taxonomist, Alfred Kahl (1877-1946), Including a Facsimile of his Forgotten Monograph from 1943. Acta Protozoologica 2004 (Suppl.) 43: 1-69
  2. ^ Corliss, John O. A Salute to Fifty-Four Great Microscopists of the Past: A Pictorial Footnote to the History of Protozoology. Part II. Transactions of the American Microscopical Society. 98: 1 (Jan, 1979), pp. 26-58