William Nylander

William Nylander ( born January 3, 1822 in Oulu, † March 29, 1899 in Paris) was a Finnish zoologist, botanist, and especially Lichenologe. Its official botanical author abbreviation is " Nyl. ".

Life and work

Nylander in 1847 received his doctorate in Helsinki as a doctor of medicine, but turned after initially in Zoology, especially of insects Research ( Entomology ), then botany to. In 1857 he was appointed professor of the newly created Department of Botany at the University of Helsinki. After six years he gave this office from, however, and moved to Paris, where he ( apart from occasional work at the Muséum national d' histoire naturelle) lived as a predominantly free scientists without steady employment and regular income. It was not until 1878 he received a modest pension from Finland. In Paris, he built up an extensive collection of lichens and developed into one of the world's leading Lichenologen his time. Overall, he described estimated 3,000 species or forms of lichen and has published over 300 scientific papers. As a taxonomic aid, he led until today used chemical methods of determination in the lichenology a ( iodide hypochlorite ) that may indicate by color reactions relationships. On the other hand, he was violently opposed to the later found to be correct theory of Simon Schwendenerstrasse, who interpreted as lichen symbioses between algae and fungal partners.

Nylander was one of the first who pointed out the connection between air pollution and returning lichen growth, and as the basis for the use of lichens as bioindicators of air quality laid.

Nylanders lichen collection of more than 50,000 patterns is now located at the University of Helsinki in the Finnish Museum of National History