Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper

Infobox Scientist
name = Andreas Schimper
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caption = Andreas Schimper
birth_date = May 12, 1856
birth_place = Strasbourg, France
death_date = September 9, 1901
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nationality = Germany
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field = botanist
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alma_mater = University of Strassburg
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Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper (May 12, 1856 – September 9, 1901) was a botanist and phytogeographer who made major contributions in the fields of histology, ecology and plant geography.

Schimper was born in Strasbourg, France, into a family of eminent 19th century scientists. His father Wilhelm Philipp Schimper (1808-1880) was Director of the Natural History Museum in Strassburg, Professor of Geology, and a leading bryologist. His father's cousin was Wilhelm Schimper (1804-1878), prominent collector and explorer in Arabia and North Africa and the naturalist Karl Friedrich Schimper.

Andreas studied at the University of Strassburg from 1874 to 1878, acquiring a Ph.D. Thereafter he worked in Lyon and travelled to the United States, staying in Baltimore and Massachusetts. In 1886 he was appointed Extraordinary Professor in Bonn, where he worked largely on cell histology, chromatophores and starch metabolism. He had become interested in phytogeography and ecology, undertaking expeditions to the West Indies and Venezuela in 1882-1883, and to Ceylon, Malaya and Java in 1889-1890, concentrating on mangroves, epiphytes and littoral vegetation. This resulted in his account of the "Rhizophoraceae" in Engler & Prantl's "Naturl. Pflanzenfam."He is best known for "Pflanzengeographie auf Physiologischer Grundlage", published in Jena in 1898, in which he coined the term tropical rainforest.

In 1898 he accepted an invitation to join the German deep-sea expedition aboard the "Valdivia" under the leadership of Prof. Chun. The trip lasted 9 months during which time they visited the Canary Islands, Cameroon, Cape Town, (where he joined Rudolf Marloth on collecting trips in the southern Cape), Kergeulen, New Amsterdam and Cocos Islands, Sumatra, the Maldives, Ceylon, the Seychelles and the Red Sea.

Returning in 1899, he took up the appointment of Professor of Botany at the University of Basel. His health had been seriously affected by malaria contracted in Cameroon and Dar-es-Salaam and he died in 1901.

Marloth wrote an account of the Cape floral region for Chun's proposed "Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer Valdivia 1898-1899." Schimper contributed two chapters on "Gebiet der Hartlaubgehölze" and "Der Knysnawald".

Schimper is commemorated in numerous specific names.

References

*"Botanical Exploration of Southern Africa" Mary Gunn & LE Codd (Balkema 1981)

External links

*cite book
last = Schimper
first = Andreas Franz Wilhelm
coauthors = William Rogers Fisher, Percy Groom, Isaac Bayley Balfour
editor = Translation of "Pflanzen-geographie auf physiologischer Grundlage" by William Rogers Fisher
title = Plant-geography Upon a Physiological Basis
url = http://books.google.com/books?id=I_MKAAAAIAAJ
format = HTML
accessdate = 2008-05-08
date = 1903
publisher = Clarendon Press
*cite book
last = Strasburger
first = Eduard
authorlink = Eduard Strasburger
coauthors = Fritz Noll, Hobart Charles Porter, Heinrich Schenck, Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper
editor = Translated by Hobart Charles Porter
title = A Text-book of Botany
url = http://books.google.com/books?id=qqJuuC_L9yIC
date = 1898
publisher = Macmillan Publishers
pages = 632 pages