Австриялық табиғатты зерттеуші Й. И. Шиффермюллер және түстер жүйесінің тырысысы

Austrian naturalist

Jeremias (Johann) Ignaz Schiffermüller (2 November 1727, Hellmonsödt – 21 June 1806, Linz) was an Austrian naturalist and Jesuit teacher who took a special interest in the Lepidoptera. In order to describe the colours of butterflies, he also looked for a systematic approach to describing colours in nature and to standardize their names. The moth Tinea schiffermullerella was named after him but the name is no longer valid.

Schiffermüller was born in Hellmonsödt near Linz. The baptism record notes the name as Jeremias Ignatio, he was the eighth of ten children of master brewer Leopold Schiffermiller and Maria née Margottin. Jeremias Mitterbauer a meat seller was his godfather. His collection is in the Kaiserlichen Hof Naturalienkabinett (now Naturhistorisches Museum Wien). In 1775 he was named a royal councilor and he moved to Linz, living there until his death. In his Versuch eines Farbensystems (1772), Schiffermüller addressed the need for a standardised nomenclature with which to describe the countless colours of nature. Work by predecessors in this field had proved unsatisfactory: he mentions suggestions made by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (1723–1778) in his Entomologia Carniolica (1763) and August Johann Rösel (1705–1759) in his Insecten Belustigung (1746–61). He made use of the work of L'optique des couleurs by the French Jesuit Louis Bertrand Castel (1688–1757). He included a colour circle for the saturated colours which he termed as "blühende Farben" (florid colors). He then tried to define tints of each colour. To serve as a model, Schiffermüller himself presents a table classifying and sub classifying shades of blue, and naming them in German, Latin and French: in all, 81 German terms are listed. Matching this table, and using the same alphabetical notation, is a 3 x 12 matrix showing a set of colour samples for blue, with some discussion of the pigments used.