Schimper, Andreas Franz Wilhelm
Schimper, Andreas Franz Wilhelm
Born May 12, 1856, in Strasbourg; died Sept. 9,1901, in Basel. German botanist.
Schimper, the son of W. P. Schimper, graduated from the University of Strasbourg in 1878. He became a professor at the University of Bonn in 1886 and at the University of Basel in 1898. He traveled frequently to study tropical plants. Schimper substantiated and developed the ecological-physiological school in plant geography and distinguished five types of vegetation based on the interrelation of physiology and geography. He elucidated the genetic links between various types of plastids and studied the formation of starch grains.