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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