1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Zirkel, Ferdinand

​ZIRKEL, FERDINAND (1838–1912), German petrographer, was born at Bonn in 1838. He was educated at Bonn, where he trained as a mining engineer, but a journey he made to Iceland and the Faeroe Is., Scotland and England, and a meeting with Henry Clifton Sorby (see 25.431) attracted him to the study of microscopical petrography, then a comparatively new science. He became professor of mineralogy and geology successively at Lemberg (1863), Kiel (1868) and Leipzig (1870), retiring from the last-named post in 1909. He did much to develop the study of petrography, and his Lehrbuch der Petrographie (1866; 2nd ed. 1893–4) is a standard work on the subject. He was an hon. D.Sc. of Oxford, and also a foreign member of the Royal Society and an hon. member of the Mineralogical Society. He died at Bonn June 11 1912.