Otto Stocker

Otto Stocker (born December 17, 1888 in Freiburg im Breisgau , † November 15, 1979 in Darmstadt ) was a German botanist . Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Stocker ".

Life

From 1908 to 1912 Stocker studied natural sciences with a focus on botany at the University of Freiburg (with Friedrich Oltmanns ) and at the University of Jena (with Ernst Stahl ). He completed his studies with the higher teacher examination in 1912 in Karlsruhe. He then worked as a research assistant for Ludwig Klein at the TH Karlsruhe . In 1913 he got a job as a high school teacher in Bremerhaven . In addition to his work as a teacher, he studied with the most modest means the "transpiration and water ecology of north-west German heather and bog plants on site". With this self-developed and without any guidance from a "doctoral supervisor" worked on, he received his doctorate in 1923 at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Freiburg im Breisgau.

In the years that followed, Stocker undertook numerous research trips to different climatic regions of the world, where he carried out experimental studies on site ecology, in particular on the water balance of plants. The school authorities in Bremerhaven, which had granted him generously paid leave over the years, could no longer give him these freedoms in the global economic crisis that began in 1930. In 1932 she relieved him of some of his school duties and made him head of the sea water aquarium and the animal grottos in Bremerhaven.

The methods used by Stocker on his research trips and the scientific results obtained with them, which he published in specialist journals, found international recognition. In 1934 Stocker followed a call to the chair of botany at the TH Darmstadt . Here he focuses on the physiological basis of drought resistance in cultivated plants. His methods had a lasting influence on similar research work by agricultural scientists (e.g. the work of Otto Tornau ).

Stocker was a member of the NSDAP since May 1, 1933 and active in the SA from 1933 to 1935 . In 1934 he was promoted to squad leader of the SA. He was also a member of the NSDoB . At the end of October 1945 Stocker was dismissed from civil service for "political reasons". In a first denazification process, he was classified as a suspect in early 1947. In the first instance, however, the ruling chamber classified him as a minor offender. Stocker appealed against this. In September 1947 he was then exonerated. He was then able to take up his professorship again in 1948. Until his retirement in 1959, he continued to focus primarily on issues relating to the water balance of plants. During this time he wrote an excellent plan of botany (1952) and participated in the manual of plant physiology edited by Wilhelm Ruhland . Volume 3 Plant and Water , published in 1956 and edited by Stocker himself, contains several articles by him on water absorption and water storage by plants, on measuring methods for transpiration (see also perspiration scales ) and on the problem of drought resistance.

Major works

• The Egyptian-Arab desert. G. Fischer, Jena 1926.
• The Wadi Natrun . G. Fischer, Jena 1927.
• The water balance of Egyptian desert and salt plants from the standpoint of an experimental and comparative plant geography. G. Fischer, Jena 1928 ( Botanical Treatises. Issue 13).
• The biological worldview - basic problems of biology. Geist, Bremen 1940 ( publications of the Bremen Scientific Society. Series G).
• Plant physiological exercises. G. Fischer, Jena 1942.
• Western Lapland . G. Fischer, Jena 1944.
• Basics of a natural greenhouse culture. Ulmer, Stuttgart 1949 ( Basics and progress in horticulture and viticulture. Issue 73).
• Outline of botany. Springer, Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg 1952.
• Handbook of Plant Physiology. Edited by W. Ruhland. Volume 3: Plant and Water. Edited by Otto Stocker. Springer, Berlin, Göttingen, Heidelberg 1956.
• Compendio de botánica. Ed. Laboratory, Barcelona 1959.

literature

• Melanie Hanel: The Technical University of Darmstadt in the "Third Reich", dissertation, Darmstadt 2013.
• Isabel Schmidt: The TH Darmstadt in the post-war period (1945–1960), dissertation, Darmstadt 2014.
• Hubert Ziegler , Walter Kausch, Otto L. Lange and Ulrich Lüttge : Otto Stocker 1888 to 1979. In: Reports of the German Botanical Society. Volume 95, 1982, pp. 375-386 (with picture, bibliography and index of the dissertations prepared under the aegis of Stocker).

Web links

• Author entry and list of the described plant names for Otto Stocker at the IPNI