Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper ( born May 12, 1856 in Strasbourg, † September 9, 1901 in Basel ) was a German botanist and university professor. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " A.Schimp. ".
Life and work
The son of Wilhelm Philipp Schimper studied natural sciences, particularly botany at the University of Strasbourg among others, Heinrich Anton de Bary in 1878, he said the Dr. phil. received his doctorate. In 1880 he was a Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore / USA. From 1882 he was an assistant at the University of Bonn with Eduard Strasburger, then there lecturer. Schimper in 1890 was appointed associate professor in Bonn and from 1898 was professor of botany at the University of Basel.
Schimper devoted himself to numerous trips plant ecology. Among other things, he toured the West Indies in 1882 and Venezuela; In 1886, he was with Fritz Müller in Brazil and 1889 in Ceylon and at the Botanical Gardens in Buitenzorg ( Bogor / Java). 1898 to 1899 he was a participant at the Valdivia expedition.
1883 postulated Schimper the symbiotic origin of chloroplasts and thus became the forerunner of the later formulated endosymbiont theory (see Konstantin Sergeyevich Merejkowski and Lynn Margulis ).
Schimper published in 1898 his " plant geography on a physiological basis," in which he sought to explain the distribution and coexistence of plants after the then state of knowledge ökophysiologisch. In the preface of his book he wrote: "Only if it remains in close touch with the experimental physiology, plant ecology, geography will be able to open new paths, because it requires a precise knowledge of the living conditions of the plant, which can give only the experiment " ( 1898: IV).
For the further development of vegetation science was his grouping of the plant formations of meaning: " From the foregoing two ecological formation groups are to be distinguished, climatic or field formations dominated the vegetation character by hydrometeors, and the edaphic or location formations, where the same primarily through the soil is due " ( 1898:175-176 ).
At the same time Russian soil scientists, the idea of the vegetation is " klimazonalen " and " azonal " addressed; these ideas were later taken up by Frederic Edward Clements, among others (1916) and Heinrich Walter ( 1954).
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper 1894 was one of the four founders of the textbook of botany for colleges (gen. " Strasburger " ) and up to the 5th edition of 1902, the editor of the chapter seed plants.
In 1892 he was inducted into the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Significant scientific work
- AFW Schimper: On the development of chlorophyll grains, and color bodies. In: Botanical newspaper. 41, 1883, Sp 105-120, 126-131 and 137-160. see also http://edocs.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/volltexte/2008/10085/
- Syllabus of lectures on herbal Pharmacognosy. - Strasbourg: . Heitz, 1887 Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf
- AFW Schimper: The epiphytic vegetation of America. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena, 1888 (162 pages, Project Gutenberg eText ).
- AFW Schimper: Instructions for microscopic examination of the vegetable food and beverage. 134 Fig Gustav Fischer Verlag, Jena, 1900 ( 158 pages, Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf ).