Fritz Gessner

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Fritz Gessner (born June 27, 1905 in Vienna , † December 20, 1972 in Kiel ) was an Austrian botanist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " F.Gessner ".

Life

Fritz Gessner was born on Hofstadtgasse in Vienna. His father was the bank clerk and later bank director Karl Gessner, his mother Bertha nee Hell came from the Sudetenland . When Fritz was 2 years old, his sister Ilse was born, who went blind after a failed eye operation and later worked as a teacher for the blind.

The family moved to Einwanggasse in the Hietzing district of Vienna; Fritz attended elementary school here. When his father was transferred to Gablonz in Bohemia, Fritz graduated from high school there. During this time Fritz Gessner began to be interested in his later specialty, the study of the Amazon . When he was 17, he published the results of a study on a plankton sample. In addition, he was busy investigating the drinking water reservoir of Gablonz during high school.

The family returned to Vienna and Fritz Gessner studied with Richard Wettstein and Hans von Molisch at the then renowned university for botany . After receiving his doctorate, he first went to Greifswald in the early 1930s , then to the Institute for Seenkunde in Langenargen , where he worked on the phosphorus content of Lake Constance .

When Karl von Faber became director of the Botanical Institute in Munich , he brought Gessner as an assistant. Gessner completed his habilitation in Munich with a thesis on the respiration of aquatic plants in different oxygen conditions. In 1930 he founded the Hiddensee Biological Research Station together with Professor Erich Leick. In the Second World War Gessner was drafted into military service; he came to the Ukraine , where he soon headed a small investigation station.

After the war he quickly returned to Germany, initially to Seeon am Chiemsee . In Munich he then received a lectureship at the university.

In 1953 he received his first invitation to Venezuela ; this was the beginning of intensive research in South America . Fritz Gessner quickly developed into a renowned expert on tropical flora. His important work on the blooming of the water lily Victoria amazonica (then called Victoria regia ) was created in the Amazon .

In 1960 Fritz Gessner was offered a professorship in marine botany at the Kiel Institute for Oceanography (today part of the Leibniz Institute for Marine Sciences ), which he held until his death in 1972. In the 1960s he was also scientific director in Cumaná , Venezuela. Research and congress trips have taken him to Korea , Japan , Norway , the Netherlands and Rovinj in the former Yugoslavia (now Croatia ).

Today the research launch of the Institute for Ecology at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald bears his name. In addition, Fritz Gessner contributed to several popular science books on biology, of which the Handbuch der Biologie (published in fourteen volumes from 1942 to 1977 in various editions) became the best known.

Fritz Gessner is the father of two sons, Dieter and Volkmar Gessner , and a daughter, Sabine Sonntag.

Works (selection)

  • 1930: The crisis in Darwinism
  • 1940: sea and beach
  • 1941: The assimilation of vital-colored chloroplasts
  • 1942: Handbuch der Biologie (14 volumes, with Ludwig von Bertalanffy )
  • 1948: Investigations into the water balance of plants in case of nitrogen deficiency
  • 1949: General botany for physicians
  • 1955: Hydrobotany, Vol. 1
  • 1959: Hydrobotany, Vol. 2
  • 1959: The Improbable Life - A Biology for All
  • 1960: The photosynthesis of marine plants in relation to salinity
  • 1961: The growth of infiltrated seedlings
  • 1965: Investigations into the vascular juice of tropical lianas
  • 1969: Plant Geography

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gessner, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian botanist
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 20, 1972
Place of death Kiel