Woldemar Tranzschel

Woldemar Heinrich Tranzschel (often Vladimir Andrejevich Tranzschel or Transchel, also Russian: Владимир Андреевич траншель or Вольдемар Генрихович; born January 4, ^jul. / 16th January  1868 ^greg. In Saint Petersburg , † 21st January 1942 in Leningrad) was a Russian botanist and mycologist. His specialty was the taxonomy of rust fungi (Pucciniales, Syn. Uredinales) . Its official botanical author abbreviation was Tranzschel .

Life

Woldemar Tranzschel was born on January 16, 1868 in St. Petersburg. He studied at the university in his hometown, where he was taught by botanists AN Beketow, C. Gobi, AA Famintzyn and IP Borodin. His keen interest in botany led him to join a group of students who spent their free time doing botanical field studies and taxonomic discussions. The group included Andrei Nikolajewitsch Krasnow (1862-1914), Robert von Regel and Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov (1864-1932). He put on extensive botanical collections early on, so he examined the regions around Vyborg , Novgorod and St. Petersburg.

He began to be interested in cryptogams at an early age and received his doctorate in 1888 with a study on the sooty flora in the province of St. Petersburg.

After completing his doctorate in 1889, he initially took on an assistant position for the botany of cryptogams and became curator of the Botanical Museum of the University of St. Petersburg . But already in the next year he moved to the St. Petersburg Institute for Forest Sciences, where he took up an assistant position to Professor IP Borodin. Here he examined the mycological flora of the institute's own park.

In 1897 he undertook a research stay in the laboratory of the biological station in Bologoje . Later he published an overview of the flora of the Waldai region . From this time on he turned his botanical interest increasingly to the botany and phylogeny of mushrooms.

In 1898 he moved to the University of Warsaw as an assistant for plant morphology and systematics , but returned to St. Petersburg as early as 1900, where he took up a position as curator of the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences. Here he found a rudimentary cryptogam herbarium, which he expanded into one of the most extensive in Europe.

In 1899 he visited Germany, Austria and Switzerland to conduct botanical studies. In 1903 he traveled again to Germany and Switzerland to study the mycological flora of the Swiss Alps.

He also undertook numerous botanical collecting trips within Russia. In 1900 he explored Kyrgyzstan and collected plants in the Alai and Transalai mountains . Twice, in 1927 and 1929, he toured the regions around Ussuriysk and Primorye . He also worked intensively botanically on the Crimea region . He also traveled to Sudan for a botanical expedition.

In 1912 he finally became the chief botanist of the Institute of Botany. He held this position until his death in 1942.

Woldemar Tranzschel died during the siege of Leningrad by German troops during World War II , from the consequences of which his health suffered greatly.

Woldemar Tranzschel was considered the most renowned mycologist in Russia. His research focus was on rust fungi (Uredineae), which he devoted more than 50 years of his professional life to researching.

He succeeded in experimentally demonstrating the connection between the aecidial stages of rust fungi and their teleutospores on their intermediate host plants. From this he derived a method to identify the unknown intermediate host for parasitic fungal species, which are assumed to have a heteroic way of life. After that should aeciale stages on those host plants and their botany close relatives are sought that of microcycliscen species with morphologically similar Telia and teliospores as the colonized to be examined Art.

From this discovery he deduced that the taxonomic classification of rust fungi should also take their ecology into account. This theorem entered botanical science as Tranzschel's law or Tranzschel's rule . The thesis made almost 100 years ago is now considered to be proven by modern evolutionary biology and molecular biological studies.

His most important work is his book on rust fungi in the Soviet Union, published in 1939, in which he mycologically describes 844 species that occur in the territory of the Soviet Union and 288 other species that are likely to exist here. After his death, the area of ​​the rust fungus remained untreated for a long time. The mycologist Wassili Feofilowitsch Kuprewitsch finally continued Tranzschel's work on the fourth, unfinished volume of the book and published it in 1957.

Most of the plant samples he has collected are in the cryptogam herbarium of the St. Petersburg Institute of Botany.

Dedication names

The rust fungus genus Tranzschelia and the smut fungus Tranzscheliella are named after Woldemar Tranzschel .

Publications

Together with Arthur Louis Arturowitsch Jaczewski (1863-1932) and WL Komarow, Tranzschel published the Fungi Rossiae exsiccati from 1895 to 1900 . From 1910 to 1912 he published the Mycotheca rossica with WA Serebrjannikow .

Together with the Russian biologist Alexander-Paul Henckel (1872–1927), he translated Anton Kerner of Marilaun's work plant life into Russian.

• On the uredine flora of the Arkhangelsk and Vologda governorates. In: Scripta botanica Horti Universitatis Imperialis Petropolitanae. III: II, 1891, pp. 134, 136
• Contributiones ad floram mycologicam Rossiæ, I. Enumeratio fungorum in Tauria a. 1901 lectorum. In: Trudy Botanicheskago Muzeya Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk (Works from the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.) Volume 1, 1902, pp. 47–75 (Russian)
• About some Puccinia species established on the basis of an erroneous determination of the nutrient plants. Annuals of Mycology 2 (2), March 1904, pp. 157-161
• Contributiones ad floram mycologicam Rossiæ, II. Enumeratio fungorum in Tauria lectorum. In: Trudy Botanicheskago Muzeya Imperatorskoy Akademii Nauk (Works from the Botanical Museum of the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.) Volume 2, pp. 31–47 (Russian)
• Systematics and biology of the genus Triphragmium auct. (Triphragmium Link, Triphragmiopsis Naumov, Nyssopsora Arthur). In: Journal of the Botanical Society of Russia. Volume 8, 1925, pp. 123-132. (Russian)
• The rust fungi in their relationship to the systematics of vascular plants. Commemorative publication for IP Borodin, 1927 (Russian)
• Uredinalium species novae ex Sibiria. In: Trudy Botanicheskogo Instituta Akademii Nauk SSSR (Acta of the Botanical Institute of Sciences of the Soviet Union), Ser. 11: Sporovye rastenenija, Fasc. 1, 1933, pp. 267-273. (Russian)
• The Uredinales as indicators of the affinity of their hosts in relationship to their evolution. In: Sovietskaya Botanica. 1936 No. 6, pp. 133-144. (Russian)
• On the biology of the uredinees of the Far East. In: Trudy Botanicheskogo Instituta Akademii Nauk SSSR (Acta of the Botanical Institute of Sciences of the Soviet Union), Ser. 11: Sporovye rastenenija, 1938 (Russian)
• Conspectus Uredinalium URSS. ( Rust mushrooms of the USSR. ) 1939 (Russian)
• together with Kuprewitsch: Flora Plantarum Cryptogamarum URSS: Fungi 1, Uredinales, Fasc. 1 Familia Melampsoraceae. Moscow, Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1957 (Russian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Vladimir C. Asmous: Prof. VA Tranzschel, 1868-1942. In: Mycologia. Volume 37, No. 2 (March - April, 1945), pp. 271-274
2. ↑ Tranzschel, Woldemar (Andrejevitch) (1868-1942) in the Plant Collectors database on the JSTOR homepage, accessed on March 7, 2016
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Rolf Singer: Death and Memorials. In: Science. Volume 99, 1944, p. 443
4. ^ RC Shattock, TF Preece: Tranzschel revisited: modern studies of the relatedness of different rust fungi confirm his law. In: Mycologist, Volume 14, Issue 3, August 2000, pp. 113-117
5. ↑ Vasily Feofilovich Kuprevichim: Preface. in: Cryptogamic Plants of the Ussr. , Volume 4, 1957, p. 2