Heinrich Anton de Bary was a German surgeon, botanist, microbiologist, and mycologist. His researches into the roles of fungi and other agents in causing plant diseases earned him distinction as a founder of modern mycology and plant pathology.
Background
De Bary was born on January 26, 1831, in Frankfurt, Germany, one of ten children born to August Theodor de Bary, a physician, and Emilie Meyer de Bary. His parents encouraged his early propensities toward the study of natural science, and as a youth in Frankfurt he frequently joined the excursions of the active group of naturalists who collected specimens in the nearby countryside.
Education
After graduating in 1848 from the Gymnasium in Frankfurt, de Bary began the study of medicine at Heidelberg, continued at Marburg, and from 1850 pursued his studies at Berlin. There he had the opportunity to study under the botanist Alexander Braun, who as teacher and longtime friend communicated to him his own enthusiasm for botany. De Bary was a pupil also of Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, known for his work on the Infusoria, and of the physiologist and comparative anatomist Johannes Müller, who exercised great influence on the students in his laboratory; de Bary was, some years later, to found laboratories in botany himself and to guide his students in a broad range of investigations. When de Bary received his degree in medicine at Berlin (1853) his dissertation was on a botanical subject and was entitled, De plantarum generatione sexuali.
Career
De Bary entered the practice of medicine in Frankfurt but soon found himself drawn back to botany. Giving up his medical practice, he became Privatdozent in botany at the University of Tübingen. Here Hugo von Mohl, the noted plant anatomist, taught, and de Bary was for a while his assistant. In 1855 de Bary succeeded the botanist Carl von Naegeli at Freiburg im Breisgau.
De Bary established a botanical laboratory at Freiburg; it was the first laboratory of botany and represented a new development in botanical teaching, although its facilities were simple. Here he received the first of the many students who were to gather about him.
In 1867 he succeeded D.F. L. von Schlechtendal at the University of Halle, where he established another botanical laboratory. Upon the death of Schlechtendal, who with Mohl had founded the Botanische Zeitung, de Bary became coeditor of the publication, and he served at times as sole editor. His first paper had appeared in this journal when he was a medical student and through it - both editorially and as a contributor - he exercised an important influence upon the field of botany.
After the Franco-Prussian War, de Bary was appointed professor of botany at the rechartered University of Strassburg and was appointed its first rector by unanimous vote. The well-appointed botanical institute that he founded there attracted students from Europe and America, and he encouraged them to pursue a diversity of interests. He participated in the activities of various botanical societies while continuing in his editorial capacities. He remained at Strassburg until his death.
De Bary clarified the understanding of the life histories of various fungi at a time when they were still considered by some to arise through spontaneous generation. In 1853, in Untersuchungen über die Brandpilze, writing on the fungi that produced rusts and smuts in cereals and other plants, de Bary had already come to the conclusion that these fungi were not the products of the cell contents of the affected plants, nor did they arise from the secretions of sick cells.
In his major works on morphology, published between 1866 and 1884, de Bary included the latest botanical researches and the results of his own investigations. His books contain classic descriptions and illustrations, and they were signal contributions to classification and to the systematization of botanical knowledge, establishing mycology as a science.
Views
Various of de Bary’s investigations demonstrated the sexuality of the fungi. He observed the conjugation of Spirogyra in 1858 and in 1861 described sexual reproduction Peronospora. He saw the necessity of observing life cycles in continuity and attempted to follow them in the living plant as far as possible. To this end he introduced methods for sowing spores and watching them as they developed.
De Bary outlined the course of the potato blight. He had successfully sown spores of Peronospora infestans on healthy potato leaves, and he described the penetration of the leaf and the subsequent growth of the mycelium that affected the tissues, the ensuing formation of the conidia, and the appearance of the characteristic black spots of the potato blight. He had also sown Peronospora on potato stalks and tubers, and even had watered conidia into the soil to infect healthy tubers. He believed that the mycelium could survive the winter in the tubers. Certainly there was no spontaneous generation. Some observers might conclude that Peronospora arose from within the potato plant because traces of penetration had disappeared, but de Bary maintained that undoubtedly the contagion was due to the numerous germs of parasites and the exterior conditions that favored their invasion of the host plants.
Connections
De Bary was married to Antonie Einert, and four children were born to them.