Arend Joachim Friedrich Wiegmann

Arend Joachim Friedrich Wiegmann (born March 30, 1770 in Hadersleben , † March 12, 1853 in Braunschweig ) was a German pharmacist , botanist and agricultural scientist .

Life path

Wiegmann completed an apprenticeship as a pharmacist with his uncle in Braunschweig from 1784. In 1788 he moved to Blankenburg and then worked in several pharmacies in Germany and Switzerland until 1794 until he returned to Braunschweig in 1794. When his uncle died in 1796, he inherited the court pharmacy in Braunschweig . Since he loved the natural sciences more than the profession he had learned, he sold this pharmacy and devoted himself to scientific studies as an autodidact.

From 1820 Wiegmann worked as a private lecturer for natural sciences at the Collegium Carolinum in Braunschweig . From 1821 he was a member of the Leopoldina in Halle. The Medical Faculty of the University of Marburg awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1832 . In the same year he was appointed professor at the Collegium Carolinum . He spent the last years of his life in loneliness and poverty. His son Arend Friedrich August Wiegmann (1802–1841) was a well-known zoologist.

Research services

Wiegmann has achieved excellent results in several areas of natural and agricultural sciences. His main field of work was initially botany . He described the vegetation of regional landscapes with a keen eye for observation. Him the genus was named in honor Wiegmannia Meyen from the plant family of the redness plants (Rubiaceae) named. After 1830 his main interest was the diseases of cultivated plants . He saw the improper cultivation technique of many crops as the main reason for the widespread spread of plant diseases. He acquired a firm place in the early history of phytomedicine with his handbook "The diseases and pathological deformities of plants ..." published in 1839, a work written for agricultural and forestry practice with instructions for recognizing, preventing and combating plant diseases.

Wiegmann's name was best known in the history of science in agricultural chemistry in connection with the theory of the mineral nutrition of plants. In response to a question asked by the Göttingen Academy of Sciences in 1838 , Wiegmann and Ludwig Polstorff , the administrator of the court pharmacy in Braunschweig, were able to provide experimental evidence that the plants absorb the minerals through their roots and only then grow normally, when there is a minimum amount of these minerals in the soil. The complete results of their experiments, the exact description of their method and their correct conclusion that these minerals are essential for the growth of plants, they published in 1842 in an award-winning publication under the title "About the inorganic components of plants ...".

Major works

• About the origin of the Entomostaceans and Podurelles from Priestley's green matter. Transformation of these into cryptogamic plants, and this again into the animals mentioned above . In: Nova Act Acad. Caes. Leopold X. 2. Bonn 1821.
• About hybrid production in the vegetable kingdom. One of the Kgl. Academie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin awarded award script. Brunswick 1828.
• About the origin, formation and nature of peat. Brunswick 1837.
• The diseases and morbid deformities of the plants, with indication of the causes and the cure or prevention thereof, as well as on some animals harmful to the plants and their destruction. A handbook for farmers, gardeners, garden lovers and foresters. Verlag Friedrich Vieweg and son Braunschweig 1839.
• Regarding the inorganic constituents of plants, or the answer to the question: Are the inorganic elements which are found in the ashes of plants as essential constituents of the vegetal organism that it needs for its complete development, and are they presented to the plants from outside ? An award document that was crowned in Göttingen in 1842, along with an appendix on the assimilation in question of the humus extract (together with Ludwig Polstorff). Verlag Friedrich Vieweg and son Braunschweig 1842.

literature

• BHA Wiegmann: History of the Wiegmann family from 1600 on. Self-published by Godesberg 1907, pp. 77–88 and 114–115.
• B. Wehnelt: The plant pathology of romanticism. Bonn 1943, p. 81 (with picture).
• Black: Arend Joachim Friedrich Wiegmann. In: German pharmacist biography. Edited by Wolfgang Hagen-Hein and Holm-Dietmar Schwarz, Volume 2, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft Stuttgart 1978, pp. 744-745. (= Publications of the International Society of Pharmacy e.V., NF, Volume 46).
• Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (Ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 653 .

Web links

Wikisource: Arend Joachim Friedrich Wiegmann  - Sources and full texts

• Literature at the Herzog August Library

Individual proof

1. ^ List of members Leopoldina, Arend Wiegmann