Johann Wilhelm Meigen (3 May 1764 – 11 July 1845) was a German entomologist famous for his pioneering work on Diptera.
Life
Early years
Meigen was born in Solingen, the fifth of eight children of Johann Clemens Meigen and Sibylla Margaretha Bick. His parents, though not poor, were not wealthy either. They ran a small shop in Solingen. His paternal grandparents, however, owned an estate and hamlet with twenty houses. Adding to the rental income, Meigen's grandfather was a farmer and a guild mastercutler in Solingen.
Two years after Meigen was born, his grandparents died and his parents moved to the family estate. This was already heavily indebted by the Seven Years' War, then bad crops and rash speculations forced the sale of the farm and the family moved back to Solingen.
Meigen attended the town school but only for a short time. He had learned to read and write on his grandfather's estate and he read widely at home as well as taking an interest in natural history. A lodger in the household, a state surveyor named Stamm gave Meigen instruction in mathematics. Another family friend a Reformed Church organist and teacher called Berger, gave him lessons from his 10th year on in piano, orthography, and calligraphy. Later on, in 1776, he also taught him French.
Meigen became Berger's assistant, going to Mülheim with him. There he saw for the first time a systematic collection of butterflies, and here he also learned how to collect and prepare insects.
In the autumn of 1779 he returned to Solingen to help his parents, at first by giving private lessons in French, but in the following year he started a French school that lasted until early in 1784. During his few free hours in this period he studied history from Charles Rollin's 15-volume Roman History and that author's four-volume Ancient History (both in French). The only entomological work in his possession at this time was Moder's (or Kleemann's) Caterpillar Calendar.
Later in 1784 he was recommended to Pelzer, a tradesman in Aachen, for the position of resident tutor. On taking up the post, he was treated as a family member. Pelzer had a cousin in Aachen by the name of Mathias Baumhauer (1759–1818), a wool merchant's son, who was a very able entomologist. Baumhauer had a butterfly collection including about 1200 species as well as numbers of insects of all other orders.
Early entomology
Meigen's first attempts to identify his collection which was mainly of Diptera were made with a two-volume work by Philipp Ludwig Statius Muller a German translation of Linnaeus's Natursystem published in the Netherlands by Houttyn. He soon made his first discovery. The Linnean genera were too inclusive and a better classification could be arrived at using wing venation. This conclusion had already occurred to both Moses Harris in England and Louis Jurine in Geneva but at the time Meigen was unaware of this. Sensing an important step forward he secured the works of Fabricius and from that time concentrated on Diptera.
He soon found that wing venation alone was not enough to classify the Diptera correctly and he began to make drawings of the antennae viewed under a 20-power wooden-framed microscope purchased at the fair in Aachen, This and also a lens of about 6-power, and his own very sharp eyesight and visual memory led him to the next important conclusion, that the Diptera could only be classified using character combinations; what is now known as an eclectic system.
Return to Solingen
In 1786 the Solingen organist, a younger brother of his former teacher Berger died in Solingen. That position, with a French school connected with it, was offered to Meigen and he went back to Solingen.
There he became closely acquainted with a man called Weniger, who shared his interests in botany and entomology. His enthusiasm for entomology and botany became broader and he decided to extend his studies to world species. Weniger felt likewise and they contacted the banker and collector Johann Christian Gerning in Frankfurt. Gerning wrote to his son in the Netherlands, who bought insect specimens for him. A Swiss, Count von Meuron, who was in the Dutch service and whose brother was governor of Trincomalee on Ceylon heard of their wishes and obtained for them the offer of positions as surgeons on an East Indiaman, with an additional stipend. This plan was given up when Meigen's mother opposed it.