August Grisebach was a German botanist. He was a professor of botany at the University of Göttingen.
Background
August Grisebach was born on April 17, 1814, in Hanover, Niedersachsen, Germany. He was the son of the auditor general Rudolph Grisebach and Louise Meyer, his second wife. His uncle Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer was a well-known botanist.
Education
As a boy Grisebach began to collect plants and acquired a good knowledge of the native flora. His uncle was the first to instruct the young Grisebach in botany. He then studied medicine and natural history at the Universities of Göttingen and Berlin (now Humboldt University of Berlin).
Career
After graduation Grisebach was Privatdozent at Berlin and, from 1837, at Göttingen. In 1839-1840 he traveled through the Balkan peninsula and northwestern Asia Minor. This most important journey of his life led him through regions that were for the greater part botanically unexplored. The two books he published about this journey established his reputation as a botanical taxonomist and phytogeographer. While a student he had explored the western Alps, and later he traveled to Norway, southern France and the Pyrenees, and the Carpathian Mountains. In 1841 he became associate professor, and in 1847 full professor, at the University of Göttingen. He declined various offers of professorships elsewhere. He was also named director of the botanical garden there in 1875.
His scientific career is marked by the close connection of traditional taxonomic investigations and phytogeographic studies. In taxonomy and floristic botany he began his work with a monograph on the genus Gentiana. He specialized in Malpighiaceae, Gramineae, and the genus Hieracium, and studied the flora of southeastern Europe, Central America and Argentina. His works on the flora of these regions are still well known and used, although of course outdated in detail. Flora of the British West Indian Islands has recently been reprinted, and there is a detailed commentary by Stearn.
Grisebach’s main work, Die Vegetation der Erde nach ihrer klimatischen Anordnung, drew on his floristic studies, various travels in Europe, his great herbarium, and an intensive study of the contemporary literature. In the Vegetation der Erde Grisebach gave a lively picture of the earth’s plants emphasizing the effect of climate on the composition and distribution of the flora. This book has been of great importance as one of the first comprehensive reviews of knowledge of the earth’s vegetation. Grisebach considered his Flora of the British West Indian Islands his most important work. Much of his collection, especially the types of species described by him, are housed at the Göttingen University Herbarium.
Membership
Grisebach was a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Personality
Grisebach had an amazing ability to describe the vegetation of countries that he himself had never seen.