Wettstein, Richard

Wettstein, Richard 

Born June 30, 1863, in Vienna; died Aug. 10, 1931, in Trinz, in the Tirol. Austrian botanist; honorary member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1927).

Beginning in 1892, Wettstein was a professor at the German University in Prague; from 1899 he was a professor at the university and director of the Botanical Institute and Garden in Vienna. He was the author of the theory concerning the origin of a perfect (bisexual) flower of angiosperms from certain unisexual (both male and female) flowers of the Gymnospermae and of the phylogenetic classification system based on this theory (Guide to the Taxonomy of Plants, vols. 1-2, 1901-08; Russian translation, vols. 1-2, 1903-12). Wettstein was one of the creators of the morphological and geographical method in plant taxonomy. He discovered the phenomenon of seasonal dimorphism in flowering plants. Wettstein maintained Lamarckian views on questions of evolution.

REFERENCES

Vul’f, E. V. “Rikard Vetshtein [Nekrolog].” Priroda, 1932, no. 4.
Janchen, E. “Richard Wettstein.” Österreichische BotanischeZeitschrift, 1933, vol. 82, fasc. 1-2. (Contains a list of Wettstein’s works.)