MARK ELIEZER

See also:

• MARK ELIEZER BLOCH (c. 1723–1799)

BLOCH (c. 1723–1799)  , German naturalist, was born at Ansbach, of poor Jewish parents, about 1723 . After taking his degree as doctor at Frankfort-on-Oder he established himself as a physician at Berlin . His first scientific work of importance was an essay on intestinal worms, which gained a prize from the Academy of Copenhagen, but he is best known by his important work on fishes (see ICHTHYOLOGY) . Bloch was fifty-six when he began to write on ichthyological subjects . To begin at his time of life a work in which he intended not only to give full descriptions of the species known to him from specimens or drawings, but also to illustrate each species in a style truly magnificent for his time, was an undertaking the execution of which most men would have despaired of . Yet he accomplished not only this task, but even more than he at first contemplated . He died at Carlsbad on the 6th of August 1799 .