STRASBURGER, EDUARD

STRASBURGER, EDUARD (1844–1912), German botanist and one of the founders of modern plant cytology. Strasburger, born in Warsaw, was made director of the Botanical Institute at Jena in 1869, and two years later, when only 27 years of age, was appointed full professor there. In 1880 he became professor at Bonn, where he worked until his death. Under his direction, the botanical institute became a world center for research in botany and especially in the newly emerging science of cell biology.

Strasburger's early research dealt with the embryology of liverworts, ferns, and conifers. He recognized the homology of the archegonium of the fern with the embryo sac of conifers. This discovery helped lay the basis for one of the fundamental generalizations of plant evolution: the essential correspondence of the life cycles of higher and lower plants. Among Strasburger's pioneer contributions to cell biology were his description of mitotic cell division in plants and his observation of the longitudinal splitting of the chromosomes in the process. Strasburger arrived at the conclusion that the cell division process was the same in plants and animals and set forth the generalization that nuclei arise only from preexisting nuclei. His observation of the union of male and female nuclei in the reproduction of plants was of the utmost significance in establishing the universal character of the phenomenon of fertilization and the role of the nucleus as the vehicle of heredity. Strasburger was the author of the important book Ueber Zellbildung und Zelltheilung (1875), and an influential Lehrbuch der Botanik fuer Hochschulen (1894, 1967²⁹; Textbook of Botany, 1898, 1965⁷).

bibliography:

G. Karsten, in: Berichte der Deutschen botanischen Gesellschaft, 30 (1912), (61)–(86) (second pagin.), incl. bibl. of his writings.

[Mordecai L. Gabriel]