Nathanael Pringsheim (1823 - 1894)
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Biography
Sources
Selected publications
Genera
Biography
enters medical school; switches to botany
1848 earns PhD; appointed Privatdozent at Berlin
1851 marries
appointed professor at Jena
1868 inherits a bundle when his father dies; quits day job
founds Jahrbücher für Wissenschaftlich Botanik (Journal for Scientific Botany)
1893 wife dies
1894 he dies
Pringsheim's dad was a rich businessman who wanted his son to be one, too - - or, if he had to do something scientific, become a doctor. Didn't work out that way. Pringsheim did a lot of work on how cells divide (this being a major controversy of the day) and did the first life history studies of algae and some of the non-fleshy fungi, especially the Saprolegniales. A hundred years before they were placed in their own kingdom, he correctly judged that the Saprolegniales were more closely related to the organisms that they are now in the same kingdom with than they are to the fungi. The terms oogonia and sporangia (which will one day appear in this dictionary) are Pringsheim's inventions.
Isley credits him with taking Hofmeister's elucidation of the alternation of generations in ferns and applying it to research on the fungi and algae. I'm not sure whether he ( Isley) is aware of the Tulasnes, or where they fit in to all of this.
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Sources
Duane Isley (1994) One Hundred and One Botanists
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Selected Publications
Nathanael Pringsheim (1895 - 1896) Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Collected papers) 4 vol.
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Genera
Apodachlya Pringsheim
Pythium Pringsheim
Saprolegnia Nees von Esenbeck: Pringsheim
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