Marcus Elieser Bloch

Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723-1799) was a German physician and naturalist, who is best known for his contribution to ichthyology through his multivolume catalog of plates illustrating the fishes of the world. Brought up in a Hebrew-speaking Jewish family, he learned German and Latin and studied anatomy before settling in Berlin as a physician. He amassed a large natural history collection, particularly of fish specimens. He is generally considered one of the most important ichthyologists of the 18th century, and wrote many papers on natural history, comparative anatomy, and physiology.