Eduard von Martens

Eduard von Martens (18 April 1831 – 14 August 1904) also known as Carl or Karl Eduard von Martens, was a German zoologist.

Born in Stuttgart in 1831, von Martens attended university in Tübingen, where he graduated in 1855. He then moved to Berlin, where he would be based for the remainder of his career, both at the Zoological Museum of the Berlin University (from 1855) and, from 1859 on, at the Museum für Naturkunde.

In 1860, he embarked on the Thetis expedition of the Prussian expedition to Eastern Asia. When the expedition returned to Europe in 1862, von Martens continued to travel around Maritime Southeast Asia for 15 months. He published the results of the "Thetis" expedition  in two volumes, constituting the Zoologischer Theil of the "Preussische Expedition nach Ost-Asien." Vol. ii, consisting of 447 pages and 22 plates, contained a very full account of the land molluscs.

Back in Berlin, von Martens was curator of the malacological and other invertebrate sections until his death.

Von Martens described 155 new genera (150 of them molluscs) and almost 1,800 species (including around 1,680 molluscs, 39 crustaceans, and 50 echinoderms).

He was a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London, and a corresponding member of the Zoological Society of London.