Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper

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Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper

Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (born May 12, 1856 in Strasbourg , France , † September 9, 1901 in Basel ) was a German botanist and university professor. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " A.Schimp. "

Live and act

The son of Wilhelm Philipp Schimper studied natural sciences and especially botany at the University of Strasbourg under Heinrich Anton de Bary , among others , with whom he received his PhD in 1878. phil. received his doctorate. In 1880 he was a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore / USA . From 1882 he was an assistant at the University of Bonn in Eduard Strasburger , then there lecturer. In 1890 Schimper was appointed associate professor in Bonn and from 1898 was full professor of botany at the University of Basel .

Schimper devoted himself to plant ecology on numerous trips . Among other things, he toured the West Indies and Venezuela in 1882 ; In 1886 he was with Fritz Müller in Brazil and in 1889 on Ceylon and at the Botanical Garden in Buitenzorg ( Bogor / Java ). From 1898 to 1899 he was a participant in the Valdivia expedition .

In 1883 Schimper postulated the symbiotic formation of chloroplasts and thus pioneered the endosymbiont theory that was later formulated (see Konstantin Sergejewitsch Mereschkowski and Lynn Margulis ).

In 1898, Schimper published his plant geography on a physiological basis , in which he sought to explain the distribution and coexistence of plants according to the state of knowledge at the time. In the foreword of his book he wrote: "Only if it remains in close contact with the experimental physiology will the ecology of plant geography be able to open up new paths, because it presupposes a precise knowledge of the living conditions of the plant, which only experiment can provide" ( 1898: IV). In this work he defined and used the term tropical rainforest for the first time , which was also adopted in other languages, for example in English as rainforest .

His grouping of the plant formations was important for the further development of vegetation: “ After the above, two ecological formation groups have to be distinguished, the climatic or area formations, whose vegetation character is dominated by the hydrometeors, and the edaphic or site formations, where it is primarily due to the nature of the soil is conditional ”(1898: 175–176).

At the same time with Russian soil scientists, the idea of ​​" climatic zone " and " azonal " vegetation is addressed; these thoughts were later taken up by Frederic Edward Clements (1916) and Heinrich Walter (1954), among others .

In 1894, Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper was one of the four founders of the textbook on botany for universities (called "Strasburger") and was responsible for the chapter on seed plants until the 5th edition in 1902 .

On the Valdivia expedition, Schimper contracted malaria in Cameroon, which reappeared during an expedition in the Suez region and the fringes of the Sahara. There was also diabetes. He died on September 9, 1901 in the new Botanical Institute in Basel as a result of the two diseases.

Honors

Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 1892.

The plant genus Neoschimpera Hemsl is also named after him . from the family of the redness plants (Rubiaceae) and the algae genus Schimperiella G.Karst.

Significant scientific work

  • AFW Schimper: On the development of chlorophyll grains and color bodies . In: Botanische Zeitung . tape 41 , 1883, col. 105–120, 126–131 and 137–160 ( uni-frankfurt.de [PDF]).
  • Syllabus of lectures on plant pharmacognosy . - Strasbourg: Heitz, 1887. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
  • AFW Schimper: The epiphytic vegetation of America . Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1888 (162 pages, Project Gutenberg eText ).
  • AFW Schimper: Instructions for the microscopic examination of vegetable foodstuffs and luxury foods: with 134 illus. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena 1900, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-21786 (158 p.).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Catherine Caufield: The Rainforest: A Waning Paradise . FISCHER Digital, 29 December 2017, ISBN 978-3-10-561946-9 , p. 41.
  2. ^ David Bruce Weaver: The Encyclopedia of Ecotourism . CABI, January 1, 2001, ISBN 978-0-85199-368-3 , p. 194.
  3. ↑ Carl Chun: From the depths of the ocean . Gustav Fischer, Jena 1905, p. 504 ff .
  4. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Wilhelm Schimper
  5. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 , doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Schimper, Andreas Franz Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1856
PLACE OF BIRTH Strasbourg
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 1901
Place of death Basel