Oscar Neumann

Oscar Rudolph Neumann (3 September 1867 – 17 May 1946) was a German ornithologist.

Neumann travelled to Africa on several occasions, in particular between 1892 and 1894, and described many new African species. From 1900 to 1901 he traveled through Somaliland and southern Ethiopia with the German ornithologist Baron Carlo von Erlanger, clarifying the reports of earlier explorers and collecting numerous zoological specimens.

From 1908, financial difficulties forced Neumann to find employment in the Walter Rothschild Zoological Museum, where he worked for many years. In Nazi Germany, he underlied racial discrimination and fled with the help of his friend Julius Riemer in 1941 from Berlin to Cuba then to Chicago, where he worked the final years of his life as a curator in the Field Museum of Natural History.

Numerous zoological species bear his name, a few being:

• Neumann's red-winged starling (Onychognathus neumanni).
• Neumann's warbler (Hemitesia neumanni).
• Philochortus neumanni, lizard from the genus Philochortus, described by Paul Matschie in 1893.

Publications associated with Neumann

• Die Oligochäten Nordost-Afrikas, nach den Ausbeuten der Herren Oscar Neumann und Carlo Freiherr von Erlanger, W Michaelsen (1903) Zoologische Jahrbuecher (Systematik) 18: 435-556 - Earthworms from Northeast Africa, according to the collections of Neumann and Erlanger.
• Scorpione und Solifugen Nordost-Afrikas, gesammelt 1900 und 1901 von Carlo Freiherrn von Erlanger und Oscar Neumann, Zoologische Jahrbuecher (Systematik) 18: 557-578 (1903) - Scorpions and Solifugae collected in 1900/01 by Neumann and Erlanger.
• Ueber die von Herrn Dr Neumann in Abessinien gesammelten aulacopoden Nacktschnecken, (1904) Zoologische Jahrbuecher (Systematik) 19: 673-726 - On data by Dr. Neumann in regards to Abyssinian aulacopod slugs.
• Homopteren aus Nordost-Afrika, gesammelt von Oscar Neumann, A Jacobi (1904) Zoologische Jahrbuecher 19: 761-782 - Hemiptera from Northeast Africa collected by Neumann.
• Schildkröten und Eidechsen aus Nord-Ost Afrika und Arabien. Aus Carlo v. Erlanger’s und Oscar Neumann’s Forschungsreise, G Tornier (1905) Zool. Jahrb Syst 22: 365-388 - Turtles and lizards from Northeast Africa and Arabia, in regards to Erlanger and Neumann's expedition.
• Über nordost-afrikanische und arabische Kriechtiere, by Oscar Rudolph Neumann (1905) - On Northeast African and Arabian reptiles.

Further reading

• Oscar Neumann, "From the Somali Coast through Southern Ethiopian to the Sudan", Geographical Journal, 20 (October 1902), pp. 373-398