Background
Carl Borivoj Presl was born on February 17, 1794, in Prague, Bohemia, Habsburg Monarchy (now the Czech Republic).
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Karel went to Charles University to study medicine. In 1818 Presl received the doctorate degree in medicine.
Vysehrad Cemetery, Prague, Czech Republic
Gravesite of the Presl brothers at the Vysehrad Cemetery in Prague.
Botanist mycologist physician scientist
Carl Borivoj Presl was born on February 17, 1794, in Prague, Bohemia, Habsburg Monarchy (now the Czech Republic).
Karel went to Charles University to study medicine and during that time traveled to Italy and Sicily, where he met the well-known botanists Michele Tenore and Giovanni Gussoni. Following this visit, he published a work on the grasses and sedges of Sicily and then, in 1826, his first major work, Flora sicula, which dealt with the vascular plants (both cultured and wild) of that country.
In 1818 Presl received the doctorate in medicine and later in obstetrics but made only brief use of these qualifications.
After receiving his doctorate degree in medicine, Presl was appointed custodian at the National Museum in Prague at the instigation of its director in 1822, Kaspar von Sternberg. His first task was to sort Thaddaeus Haenke’s large collection of plants from South America and the Mariana and Philippine islands.
Presl also edited an account of Haenke's specimens in Reliquiae Haenkeanae, a two-volume folio published between 1825 and 1835. Many of the specimens were of previously unknown species, and Presl chose a complete set of these for his own herbarium, which he took with him when in 1836 he accepted the chair of natural history and technology at Charles University.
As a result of his study of Haenke’s ferns, Presl himself began anatomical and morphological studies of ferns; and he established an entirely new classification, which he described in Tentamen Pteridographiae (1836). This work was followed in 1844 by an account of Hymenophyllaceae and in 1846 by his studies of arattiaceae and more primitive ferns (Supplementum Tentaminis Pleridographiae, 1846).
In his last major work, Epimeliae botanicae (1851), which he completed shortly before his death, he described many new species and several new genera that were noted in material from various sources, particularly Hugh Cuming’s research in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
Presl bequeathed his herbarium to the Botanical Institute of Charles University, where it is still preserved.
As a youth Presl explored the countryside in Bohemia with his brother Jan and developed an interest in natural history. Under the guidance of W. Seidl, they collected a herbarium of cryptogamous plants and in 1812 published a work on the cryptogamous flora of Bohemia.