This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Otto Kuntze is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
Otto Carl Ernst Kuntze (June 23, 1843 - 1907) was a German botanist.
Contents |
Biography
Otto Kuntze was born in Leipzig.
An apothecary in his early career, he published an essay entitled Pocket Fauna of Leipzig. Between 1863 and 1866 he worked as tradesman in Berlin and traveled through central Europe and Italy. From 1868 to 1873 he had his own factory for essential oils and attained a comfortable standard of living. Between 1874 and 1876, he traveled around the world: The Caribbean, USA, Japan, China, South East Asia, Arabian peninsula and Egypt. The journal of these travels was published as "Around the World" (1881). From 1876 to 1878 he studied Natural Science in Berlin and Leipzig and gained his doctorate in Freiburg with a monography of the genus Cinchona.
He edited the botanical collection from his world voyage encompassing 7,700 specimens in Berlin and Kew Gardens. The publication came as a shock to botany, since Kuntze had entirely revised taxonomy. His three-volume treatise, Revisio Generum Plantarum (1891) was widely rejected or deliberately ignored.
In 1886, Kuntze visited the Russian Near East and spent the 1887-1888 period on the Canary Islands. The results of both journeys became part of his main work, the Revisio. At the beginning of the 1890s he left for South America, of which he managed to see nearly all countries. In 1894, he visited the Southern African countries as well as the German colonies.
In the last years of his life, Kuntze moved permanently to Sanremo (Italy). His revolutionary ideas about botanic nomenclature created a conflict at the 2nd Congress of Botany, as a result of which the doors of the academic world were closed to him. He died in Sanremo two years later. The standard author abbreviation Kuntze is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.1
Biographical articles
- Barnhart, John Hendley (1913). "Otto Kuntze", Bulletin of the Charleston Museum. volume 9, 65-68.
- Urban, Ignaz, Notae Biographicae, Symbolae Antillanae 3:70,1902.
- Hemsley, W. B. (1907). "Dr. Otto Kuntze", Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information, 100-101.
- Stafleu, Frans A. (1978). "Kuntze, Carl Ernst Otto", Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 15, 268-269.
External links
References
- ^ Brummitt, R. K.; C. E. Powell (1992). Authors of Plant Names. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. ISBN 1-84246-085-4.
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 5 November 2008, at 13:59.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Otto Kuntze".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.