Franz Werner

Who was Franz Werner?

Franz Werner was an Austrian zoologist and explorer. Specializing as a herpetologist and entomologist, Werner described numerous species and other taxa of frogs, snakes, insects, and other organisms.

His father introduced him at age 6 to reptiles and amphibians. A brilliant student, he corresponded often with George Albert Boulenger and Oskar Boettger who encouraged his studies with these animals. Werner obtained his doctorate in Vienna in 1890 and then after spending a year in Leipzig, began to teach at the Vienna Institute of Zoology. In 1919, he became tenured as a professor, maintaining this title until his retirement in 1933.

Although working close to the Vienna Natural History Museum, he could not use their herpetological collections, after the death of its director, Franz Steindachner, who did not like Werner, and had barred him from accessing the collections.

Werner succeeded in constituting an immense personal collection, and published more than 550 publications principally on herpetology. He named many new species of reptiles, amphibians, and arthropods, of which he specialized in orthopterans and scorpions.