Henrik Nikolai Krøyer was a Danish

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

 zoologist.

Born in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

, he was a brother of the composer Hans Ernst Krøyer

Hans Ernst Krøyer

Hans Ernst Krøyer was a Danish composer.Krøyer was born in Copenhagen and the son of Bernt Anker Krøyer and Johanne Margrethe , as well as the brother of Henrik Nikolai Krøyer.He is best remembered as the composer of today's Danish national anthem Der er et yndigt land Hans Ernst (sometimes...

. He started studying medicine at the University of Copenhagen

University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...

 in 1817, which he later changed to history

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 and philology

Philology

Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...

. While a student he was a supporter of the Philhellenic

Philhellenism

Philhellenism was an intellectual fashion prominent at the turn of the 19th century, that led Europeans like Lord Byron or Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire...

 movement, and he participated as a volunteer in the Greek War of Independence

Greek War of Independence

The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution was a successful war of independence waged by the Greek revolutionaries between...

 along with several fellow students.

Upon his return to Denmark, Krøyer gained an interest in zoology. In 1827, he took the position as assistant teacher in Stavanger

Stavanger

Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...

, where he met and later married Bertha Cecilie Gjesdal. Bertha's sister, Ellen Cecilie Gjesdal, was deemed unfit to bring up her child, so Henrik and Bertha adopted the boy, who took on the name Peder Severin Krøyer

Peder Severin Krøyer

Peder Severin Krøyer , known as P.S. Krøyer, was a Norwegian-Danish painter. He is one of the best known and beloved, and undeniably the most colorful of the Skagen Painters, a community of Danish and Nordic artists who lived, gathered or worked in Skagen, Denmark, especially during the final...

, and later became a well known painter.

Krøyer returned to Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 in 1830 where he was employed as a teacher in natural history at the Military Academy. As the course lacked a textbook, Krøyer wrote and published (1833).

During his career he often travelled along the coasts of Denmark where he studied marine life, especially fish and crustacean

Crustacean

Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...

s, and this resulted in his main work ("The Fish of Denmark", 3 volumes, 1838-1853). During his life visited most of the coasts of Western Europe as well as Newfoundland. But his health eventually deteriorated and in 1869 he had to take his leave of his position of head of the Natural Museum of Copenhagen

University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum

The Copenhagen Zoological Museum is a part of the Natural History Museum of Denmark which consist of four natural science museums.The permanent exhibition 'From pole to pole' show animals from around the world in big displays...

which he had held since 1847. He gained the title of professor in 1853.

Literature

• Henrik Nikolai Krøyer, Erindringer af Henrik Krøyers Liv 1821-38 (1870).
• Gosch: Danmarks zoologiske Littteratur