Ferdinand Stoliczka

Ferdinand Stoliczka (May 1838 - June 19, 1874) was an Austrian/Czech palaeontologist born at Hochwald in Moravia. He studied geology and paleontology at Prague and the University of Vienna under Professor Eduard Suess and Dr Rudolf Hoernes.

In 1859 he wrote to the Vienna Academy on of some freshwater mollusca from the Cretaceous rocks of the north-eastern Alps.

In 1861 he joined the Austrian Geological Survey, and in the following year he was joined the Geological Survey of India under the British Government in India. In Calcutta he became interested in Cretaceous fossils of Southern India and published them in the Palaeontologia indica, along with William Thomas Blanford.

He studied the geology of the western Himalayas and Tibet, and published numerous papers in many subjects including Indian zoology. In 1873 he joined the British expedition to Yarkand and Kashgarunder Mr (afterwards Sir Douglas) Forsyth. He died due to high altitude sickness on the 19th of June 1874, on the return journey, at Moorghi in Ladakh and his dying request was that the scientific results of the expedition be published by Allan Octavian Hume. A granite obelisk is erected in his memory at the Moravian Cemetry in Leh.

Species named

Some of the species of spiders, fish, bird and mammals named after him are listed below. Not all names may be currently valid.

• Stoliczka's crab spider (Thomisus stoliczka)
• Stoliczka's Bushchat (Saxicola macrorhyncha)
• Stoliczka's Trident Bat (Aselliscus stoliczkanus)
• Stoliczka's mountain vole (Alticola stoliczkanus)
• Stoliczka's Tic-Tac-Toe Barb (Puntius stoliczkanus) / (Barbus stoliczkanus)
• Stoliczka's Loach (Nemacheilus stoliczkai)
• Stoliczka's Treecreeper (Certhia nipalensis)