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Andreas Schimper | |
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| Born | 12 May 1856 Strasbourg, France |
| Died | 9 September 1901 (1901-09-10) (aged 45) |
| Alma mater | University of Strassburg |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Botanist |
| Author abbrev. (botany) | A.Schimp. |
Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (12 May 1856 – 9 September 1901) was a Germanbotanist andphytogeographer who made major contributions in the fields ofhistology,ecology and plant geography. He travelled to South East Asia and the Caribbean as part of the 1899 deep-sea expedition. He coined the termstropical rainforest andsclerophyll and is commemorated in numerous specific names.
Schimper was born inStrassburg, (present day Strasbourg, France), into a family of eminent scientists. His fatherWilhelm Philippe Schimper (1808–1880) was Director of the Natural History Museum in the same town, Professor of Geology, and a leadingbryologist. His father's cousin wasGeorg Wilhelm Schimper (1804–1878), prominent collector and explorer inArabia andNorth Africa; the naturalistKarl Friedrich Schimper was also a relative.
Schimper studied at theUniversity of Strassburg from 1874 to 1878, acquiring a Ph.D. He then worked inLyon, and in 1880 travelled to theUnited States, becoming a Fellow atJohns Hopkins University.
In 1882, he moved back to theUniversity of Bonn working withEduard Strasburger, becoming a private docent. In 1883, Schimper postulated theendosymbiotic origin ofchloroplasts and paved the way to thesymbiogenesis theory ofKonstantin Mereschkowski andLynn Margulis.[1] In 1886, he was appointed Extraordinary Professor at the University of Bonn, and worked largely on cell histology,chromatophores and starch metabolism. He had become interested inphytogeography and plant ecology, undertaking expeditions to theWest Indies andVenezuela in 1882–1883. In 1886, he stayed withFritz Müller inBrazil, and in 1889–1890 inCeylon, theMalaya and Botanical Garden inBuitenzorg (Bogor,Java), concentrating on mangroves,epiphytes andlittoral vegetation. This resulted in his account of theRhizophoraceae in Engler & Prantl'sNatürliche Pflanzenfamilien.
In 1898, he became Professor of Botany at theUniversity of Basel and the same year joined theGerman Valdivia-Expedition. This was a deep-sea expedition aboard theSSValdivia led by ProfessorCarl Chun. The trip lasted 9 months, during which they visited theCanary Islands,Cameroon,Cape Town, (where he joinedRudolf Marloth on collecting trips in the southern Cape),Kerguelen, New Amsterdam andCocos Islands,Sumatra, theMaldives, Ceylon, theSeychelles and theRed Sea.
Schimper was the first to give a clear and proper definition ofplastid and also explained its types. In 1899, he became Professor of Botany at theUniversity of Basel. His health had been seriously affected bymalaria contracted inCameroon andDar-es-Salaam, and he died of complications of malaria at the age of 45 in 1901.
Schimper is best known forPflanzengeographie auf physiologischer Grundlage, published at theUniversity of Jena in 1898 where he aimed to explain the expansion and ecology of plants based on the ecological knowledge of the time.[2] In this book he coined the termstropical rainforest andsclerophyll. He wrote in the preface: "Nur wenn sie in engster Fühlung mit der experimentellen Physiologie verbleibt, wird die Ökologie der Pflanzengeographie neue Bahnen eröffnen können, denn sie setzt eine genaue Kenntnis der Lebensbedingungen der Pflanze voraus, welche nur das Experiment verschaffen kann"[3](1898: IV).His classification of plant formations was important for the development of the botanical sciences: „Nach dem Vorhergehenden sind zwei ökologische Formationsgruppen zu unterscheiden, die klimatischen oder Gebietsformationen, deren Vegetationscharakter durch die Hydrometeore beherrscht, und die edaphischen oder Standortsformationen, wo derselbe in erster Linie durch die Bodenbeschaffenheit bedingt ist“[3](1898:175–176).
At the same time as his Russiansoil science colleagues, Schimper discussed the hypothesis of vegetation being limited to climate zones versus those that areazonal, which was later elaborated byFrederic Edward Clements (1916) and geobotanistHeinrich Walter (1954) amongst others.
In 1894, Schimper was one of the four original authors of the textbook of botanyLehrbuch der Botanik (named. "Strasburger") and until the 5th edition of 1902 editor of the chapter on spermatophyta or seed-bearing plants.[4]
Rudolf Marloth wrote an account of the Cape floral region for Chun's proposedWissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer Valdivia 1898-1899. and Schimper contributed two chapters on "Gebiet der Hartlaubgehölze" (Region of hardwood trees) and "Der Knysnawald".
Schimper is commemorated in specific names such asAcokanthera schimperi andHarpachne schimperi. In 1892, he was voted a member of theDeutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina.[5]
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