Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter

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Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter

Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter (born April 27, 1733 in Sulz am Neckar , † November 11, 1806 in Karlsruhe ), also Koelreuter or Kohlreuter , was a German botanist and professor of natural history and director of the court gardens in Karlsruhe. Its official botanical author's abbreviation is “ Kölr. ".

Life

The son of a pharmacist grew up in Sulz and attended Latin school there . During this time he collected plants and also dealt with animals. In his later doctoral thesis, he mentions that he owned a collection of insects.

Kölreuter was enrolled at the University of Tübingen as a medical student in 1748 . Johann Georg Gmelin , who had made a special name for himself as an explorer of Siberia and worked as a professor of medicine and botany in Tübingen , had a special influence on him . 1753 changed Kölreuter at the University of Strasbourg and came a year later to Tübingen, where he in 1755 with a thesis "On beetles and rare plants" Dr. med. received his doctorate.

From 1756 to 1761 he was adjunct of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg . He owed his appointment to a recommendation from his teacher and friend Johann Georg Gmelin. As the numerous writings he wrote during this period show, Kölreuter in Petersburg was initially primarily concerned with zoology , especially with the order and definition of the academy's fish collection, where he also re-described several species of fish, including Mola aculeata (Koelreuter, 1766) , Eleginus navaga (Koelreuter, 1770) and Gadus callarias nawaga (Koelreuter, 1770). He has also published papers on birds, insects, corals and copepods. After the Petersburg Academy had put a price assignment on the sexuality of plants in 1759, Kölreuter began botanical experiments on the fertilization of plants, and he was the first to investigate crossings between different plant species.

In 1761 he returned to Germany. He visited Johann Gottlieb Gleditsch in Berlin and Christian Gottlieb Ludwig in Leipzig , both of whom were famous botanists at the time who were busy crossing plants. He first settled in his hometown of Sulz and continued his experiments there. In 1762 he moved to Calw , where his friend and fellow student Joseph Gärtner carried out his carpological studies, i.e. research into the development of fruits.

In 1763 he received from Margrave Karl Friedrich von Baden-Durlach a call to Karlsruhe as overseer and director of the princely gardens with the title and rank of professor of natural history.

Since his garden staff in Karlsruhe did not understand his research, he gave up his positions as director of the botanical garden and as professor and continued his work in his small private garden until 1776. In 1805 he was elector senior court councilor.

Act

First, Kölreuter deals with the transfer of pollen to the scar . He differentiates between three ways of pollination:

  • 1. " Without outside or outside help, all alone "
  • 2. " Through the wind ... "
  • 3. “ By insects with nectar eyes on the flowers. .. "

and is therefore considered the founder of flower ecology and the discoverer of insect pollination .

Kölreuter's most important achievement was the production of hybrids, which he carried out for the first time guided by scientific considerations ( Thomas Fairchild crossed the two carnation species Dianthus caryophyllus and D. barbatus as early as 1719 , but this was a purely horticultural attempt).

His objects of study were among other species of the genera Nicotiana , Dianthus , Verbascum , Hibiscus , Mirabilis , Datura , Aquilegia and Cucurbita , some of which are still used today in botanical laboratories as test plants. For the first time he was able to produce a hybrid of Nicotiana rustica and N. paniculata in St. Petersburg in 1760 . With his experiments Kölreuter was able to show that during pollination the father's properties are transferred through the pollen , which finally proved the sexuality of the plants. ( Rudolf Jacob Camerarius had provided evidence in 1691 that ripe seeds are only formed when the stigmas are dusted with pollen and concluded that plants also reproduce sexually.)

Kölreuter's ichthyological work is almost completely forgotten . After working in Karlsruhe for three years, his three-part treatment of rare fish from the holdings of the museum in Saint Petersburg was published in Russia. However, they were not published under his baptismal name, but with the initials of the Latinized Russian spelling of his first names: I (osepho) T (eophilio) Koelreuter. Since a work from 1776 about plant crossings was signed with these initials, confusion is impossible. In 1764, Kölreuter almost became the first scientist to describe the spotted threadfish Trichogaster trichopterus . However, he did not adhere to the binary system of Linnaeus, which had been in effect since 1758, and only gave it a generic name : Sparus . But the large Eidechsensalmer from the north-draining river systems of South America, Piabucus dentatus (Kölreuther 1763), was first scientifically described by him according to the rules as Trutta dentata .

Dedication names

The wood genus Koelreuteria from the soap tree family (Sapindaceae) , which is widespread in East Asia, was named in his honor . The bubble ash ( Koelreuteria paniculata ) is a popular park tree.

Several freshwater , brackish water and marine fish were named in his honor, but all of them have since been used as synonym descriptions :

Fonts

  • 1755 - Dissertatio inauguralis medica de insectis coleopteris, nec non de plantis quibusdam rarioribus ... Tubingae: litteris Erhardianis
  • 1761–1766 - Preliminary news of some experiments concerning the sex of plants
  • 1763 - Piscium rariorum e museo Petropolitano excerptorum descriptiones . Novi Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae 8: 404-430.
  • 1764 - Descriptiones Piscium rariorum e museo Petropolitano exceptorum continvatio . Novi Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae 9: 420-470.
  • 1766 - Piscium rariorum e. mus. Petrop. exceptorum descriptiones continvatae . Novi Commentarii Academiae Scientarum Imperialis Petropolitanae 10: 329-351.
  • 1777 - The discovered secret of cryptogamy (in which he makes speculative and poorly founded assumptions about the sexuality of mushrooms)
  • Preliminary news of some experiments and observations relating to the sex of plants, along with continuations 1, 2 and 3 (1761–1766). Edited by W. Pfeffer. Ostwald's classic 41, Leipzig: Engelmann 1893

literature

  • J. Behrens: Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter. A botanist from Karlsruhe in the 18th century . In: Negotiations of the natural science. Verein Karlsruhe, 11 (1894), pp. 268-320
  • Hans Kugler:  Kölreuter, Joseph Gottlieb. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 12, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1980, ISBN 3-428-00193-1 , p. 325 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ernst Lehmann: Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter for his 200th birthday . In: Volk und Rasse 8 (1933), pp. 186-189
  • Friedrich Reinöhl: Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter . In: Hermann Haering, Otto Hohenstatt (Hrsg.): Swabian life pictures. Volume 2. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1942, pp. 355-367
  • Ernst Wunschmann:  Koelreuter, Joseph Gottlieb . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, pp. 493-496.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Kölreuter, Joseph Gottlieb
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist and professor of natural history as well as director of the court gardens in Karlsruhe
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1733
PLACE OF BIRTH Sulz am Neckar
DATE OF DEATH November 11, 1806
Place of death Karlsruhe