Oppenheim, Leo Paul:

By: Isidore Singer

German naturalist; born in Berlin May 28, 1863. After graduating from the Königliche Französische Gymnasium of that city in 1882, he studied natural sciences, especially zoology and geology, at Heidelberg and Berlin, taking his degree at the latter university with a treatise on fossil butterflies. This essay was followed by others on the insects of the lithographic slate of Bavaria, on the crustaceous larvæ of the same formation, etc. Oppenheim then turned his attention to the Tertiary period, on which he wrote a number of longer essays. He has especially studied Italian geology, his researches covering Capri and Sorrento, and Venice. He has dealt also with the fauna of Austria, Hungary, southern France, the Balkan Peninsula, and Germany. His paleontological studies include the foraminifera (nummulitidæ), corals, echinites, and mollusks. In 1902 he was in charge of the rich collections that Zittel, Schweinfurth, and Blanckenheim brought from Egypt and the Libyan Desert. Some of Oppenheim's writings have been published separately, and some have appeared in the "Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft."