Edition of the Correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

The project was dedicated to the indexing of the correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840), a central figure in the biological and geological science of the late 18^th century, which is of great importance in the history of science. The transcribed letters to and from Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (ca. 3000), which are in the estate of Dr. Frank William Peter Dougherty, who died in 1994, were successively annotated in English and published, including newly discovered pieces. The edition also gains significance by making letters from the Blumenbach family's possession accessible for the first time. This makes it possible to correct, enrich or reinterpret numerous details in scientific publications. Since understanding the facts and contexts sometimes requires a more in-depth study of the letters, the "Kleine Beiträge zur Blumenbach-Forschung" (Small Contributions to Blumenbach Research) were published in six volumes as a special publication organ as a net publication from 2008 to 2014. Reference is made to the "Letter volumes" to relieve the annotation apparatus. The first two volumes of "The Correspondence of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach" appeared in print in 2006 and 2007, and volumes 3 to 6 in the years 2010 to 2015 as a net publication.