Tiedemann devoted himself to the study of natural science, and, upon moving to Paris, France, became an ardent follower of Georges Cuvier. On his return to Germany he maintained the claims of patient and sober anatomical research against the prevalent speculations of the school of Lorenz Oken, whose foremost antagonist he was long reckoned. His remarkable studies of the development of the human brain, as correlated with his father's studies on the development of intelligence, deserve mention. Tiedemann was one of the first persons to make a scientific contestation of racism. In his article entitled "On the Brain of the Negro, compared with that of the European and the Orang-outang", he argued based on craniometric and brain measures taken by him from Europeans and black men from different parts of the world that the then-common European belief that Negroes have smaller brains and are thus intellectually inferior is scientifically unfounded and based merely on the prejudice of travellers and explorers. In 1827 he became correspondent of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, when that became the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1851 he joined as foreign member. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1849. Tiedemann was influenced by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and accepted the transmutation of species. Science historian Robert J. Richards has written that Tiedemann "joined the basic notion of species evolution, of a Lamarckian flavor, with the proposition that higher animals in their embryological development recapitulated the morphological stages of those lower in the scale." By the 1860s, the tobacco historian Friedrich Tiedemann had reported several cancers of the tongue brought on by smoking.
Family
In 1807 he married Frauline von Holzing. He was later married to Charlotte Hecker. He had a daughter Elise. One of Tiedemann's sons, Gustav, was a casualty of the 1848 uprisings. His son Heinrich immigrated to Philadelphia and became a physician in Philadelphia's Germantown Hospital. Perhaps influenced by his father's work, he objected to the Darwinian contention of a continuity between humans and apes.
Legacy
In 2007, Brazilian geneticist Sergio Pena called Tiedemann an "anti-racist ahead of his time".
Works
Translated : Tiedemann, Friedrich Friedrich Tiedemann's Anatomy of Headless Abortions: along with four copper plates Landshut, 1813 Tiedemann, Friedrich Anatomy and history of the brain's formation in the fetus of man, together with a comparative account of the structure of the brain in the animals Nuremberg, 1816 New Tiedemann, Friedrich Friderici Tiedemann Anatomists Et Physiologiae in Academia Heidelbergensi Professoris Icones Cerebri Simiarum Et Quorundam Mammalium Rariorum Heidelberg, 1821 Tiedemann, Friedrich Friderici Tiedemanni Tabulae arteriarum corporis humani / Friederich Tiedemann's Illustrations of the arteries of the human body Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, 1822 Tiedemann, Friedrich Friderici Tiedemanni Tabulae arteriarum corporis humani / Friederich Tiedemann's Illustrations of the arteries of the human body Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, 1822 Tiedemann, Friedrich; Gmelin, Leopold Some new constituents of bile of the ox Leipzig, 1827 Tiedemann, Friedrich Anufuf to the humanity of the higher authorities of justice care in Germany, caused by a beheaded on October 22, 1827 in Heidelberg beheading Darmstadt, 1829 Tiedemann, Friedrich The Negro's Brain Compared With The European And Orang-Outang: With Six Panels Heidelberg, 1837 Tiedemann, Friedrich Of the Duverneyschen, Bartholin's or Cowper's glands of the woman, and the oblique shape and position of the uterus: With four panels of illustrations Heidelberg, Leipzig, 1840
