Karl Friedrich Schimper

Karl Friedrich Schimper (* February 15, 1803 in Mannheim, † December 21, 1867 in Schwetzingen ) was a German naturalist, botanist, geologist and independent scholar. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " KF Schimp. "

Life

Karl Friedrich Schimper belonged to one originating from the Rhine Palatinate family, which has produced four major botanist. He was a cousin of Wilhelm Philipp Schimper Bryologen and Phytopaläontologen (1808-1880), whose son Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (1856-1901) was a famous plant geographer. His brother Wilhelm Schimper (1804-1878) was a scientist, the botanical collecting trips undertook among other things, to North Africa.

Schimper studied theology from 1822 first, then 1826 medicine at the University of Heidelberg and later in Munich. In 1829 he received his doctorate from the Faculty of Arts of the University of Tübingen " in absentia " for Dr. med. In Heidelberg he became friends with the zoologist Louis Agassiz and botanists Alexander Brown and George Engelmann. Schimper, apart from two volumes of poems, never wrote a book. His most significant discoveries in geology, the Ice Age doctrine and the doctrine of Faltenbau the Alps, he has given in two thrown with flying pen " missives " to naturalists meetings known - or he gave its findings to the "scientific community " in the form of " odes " to the best.

In addition, he informed about his research mainly in lectures and had the support of well-known personalities such as Friedrich Schelling and Lorenz Oken. In Munich were among his listeners among others, the embryologist Ignaz Dollinger, the doctor Johann Ringeis and the botanist Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius, Joseph Gerhard Zuccarini and Otto Sendtner.

Works

In his time in Munich Schimper conducted comprehensive studies on the leaf position in plants, which he himself has zeyheri only in a treatise on Symphytum published a lot. An unannounced second part of the situation in inflorescences never appeared. Since Schimper himself could not decide to write up this work, Alexander Brown published three papers Schimpers on the leaf position which he had held in 1834 at the meeting of natural scientists in Stuttgart, in the journal Flora, where he explicitly pointed out Schimpers authorship. Because of this publication and further work Brauns today is frequently spoken of the Schimper - Braun leaf position teaching, although Schimper even after subsequent statements of Brown is the real founder of the mathematically justified leaf position teaching.

In the spring of 1840 Schimper was commissioned by Crown Prince Maximilian of Bavaria with the geological study of the Alps. His research led him to the important finding that the Alps are not as Leopold taught of book that could have been caused by a sudden elevation from below, but by a horizontal pressure, which appeared on the shrinking earth to wrinkles. " On the lid of the box of evidence 30.sten pieces " Schimper wrote a report on the main results of his investigations and sent it to the Assembly of German Natural Scientists and Physicians, which met in Erlangen in September 1840. There, the " epistles " of Leopold was read out of the book and condemned by this into the ground. Than thirty-five years later Edward Suess exactly the same thoughts developed ( and more detailed than Schimper founded, not only on a cover! ), Won this fame and glory, because the actual discoverer was now long forgotten.

Schimper lived in his last years as a private scholar in Mannheim, later in Schwetzingen, where he studied tirelessly on many areas of natural history on. A small pension, which granted him the Grand Duke Leopold of Baden, saved him from the poverty in which he had lived until then.

On the origin of ice age theory

Already in the years 1835-1836 held Schimper in Munich lectures on " World Summer and Winter World " in which he developed ideas about climate variability and periods of glaciation and, among others, the spread of erratic blocks (so-called erratics ) into the foothills of the Bavarian Alps to the time the " winter world " moved. In 1836 he took part at the meeting of the Swiss naturalist in Solothurn, where she learned, among other glaciologists Franz Joseph Hugi ( 1796-1855 ) and Johann von Charpentier ( 1786-1855 ) know. After hiking through the Jura and the Black Forest, he lived four months in Charpentier in Bex in Canton Vaud and was able to develop his ideas further. From December 1836 to May 1837 he was with Louis Agassiz in Neuchâtel, where she investigated the immediate and wider surroundings of the town by ancient glaciers tracks and discovered, among other things at Le Landeron on Lake Biel, the so famous soon glacial striations on the Jurassic limestone.

While Schimper has been distributed on February 15, 1837 his birthday, which sealed by him " Ice Age 's" Ode, Agassiz held simultaneously talks about the thoughts and results, which declined significantly to Schimper.

In July 1837 Schimper then sent a missive "On the Ice Age" to the Assembly, the Swiss naturalist in Neuchâtel, where it was read by the Chairman of the meeting Louis Agassiz and then published in the Proceedings of the society.

Louis Agassiz realized the importance of the new ice age theory best. He spoke so often and so much that he was soon hailed as the real founder of the Ice Age thought and also quietly put up with this made. Schimper saw this with anger and turned to the mutual friend Alexander Brown with the urgent request to assist him in maintaining his priority. This declined to mediation from though, from his correspondence from this period is, however, clearly shows who he who held for the Master and for the student. So Schimper had no other choice but to gain on your own satisfaction - with an ode, which he published in 1840 and in the last paragraph he settled accounts with Agassiz, the ( agasse La pie! ) " Thieving magpie !".

The closing verses sounded Agassiz not just sweet to the ears. The opportunity to retort found himself, as he wrote his first book in Glacier pressure was 1841. Neither in the chapter on the history of glaciology else in the book the services or even the name of Karl Friedrich Schimpers be mentioned.

The hushed fought on anyway and sent in 1842 to the meeting in Strasbourg naturalist enlightening messages with precise chronological information on the history of its discovery, which were then printed. This has the almost forty -year scholar nothing used, in contrast to the extensive and successful Agassiz, which even Alexander von Humboldt was addressed, especially by partial petty private wars with colleagues and researchers companies come with "mon cher ami " into disrepute.

With Oden Schimper came against a widely read book in which his services have been omitted, and so was not at Agassiz in the geological profession in Europe for over half a century undisputed as the real founder of the Ice Age theory. In the U.S., the later site of action of Agassiz, it is still celebrated in the professional world as a brilliant discovery of the Ice Age.

Works

• Description of Symphytum zeyheri and its two related German S. bulbosum Schimper and S. tuberosum Jacq: with 6 tablets of stone. Winter, Heidelberg 1835 Digitized edition of the University and State Library Dusseldorf