In memoriam J. J. Tesch

JOHAN JACOB TESCH was born in Amsterdam on February 7, 1877. He studied biology at the universities of Leiden and Utrecht and took his doctor’s degree in the latter town on May 11, 1906. His thesis, entitled „Systematisch overzicht van alle tot nu toe bekende Heteropoden” (Systematic survey of all the hitherto known Heteropods), was identical with the first part of his report on the Heteropoda of the Siboga Expedition, published in the same year. Earlier, in 1904, TESCH had reported upon the Thecosomata and Gymnosomata of the same expedition. These publications were based on a great general knowledge of these pelagic gastropods, which was partly acquired during a stay at the Naples Zoological Station from February to July 1904 and during a visit to the British Museum (Natural History) in London. The publication of these two reports qualified TESCH at once as an outstanding specialist of Pteropoda and Heteropoda. From May 1906 to July 1907 TESCH was second assistant at the State Institute for Marine Research, and from August 1907 to March 1908 assistant at the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie at Leiden. Then he restarted his career as a zoologist for fishery research in which he was engaged until his retirement in 1942, except for an interval of three years and some months, from May 1915 to September 1918, during which he returned to the Leiden Museum as a curator.