Zimmermann, Walter

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Zimmermann, Walter

 

Born May 9, 1892, in Walldürn. German botanist.

Zimmermann taught at the University of Freiburg from 1919 to 1925 and the University of Tübingen from 1925 to 1960 (professor from 1930). His main works are on plant systematics, geography, and phylogeny; evolutionary morphology; paleobotany; and the theory of evolution. Zimmermann developed the telome theory of the structure of terrestrial plants and the principle of hologeny, in which phylogenesis is regarded as the transformation of ontogenetic cycles in an uninterrupted chain. He has devoted special attention to the evolution of traits rather than of taxa.

WORKS

Grundfragen der Evolution. Frankfurt, 1948.
Evolution: Die Geschichte ihrer Probleme und Erkenntnisse. Freiburg-Munich, 1953.
Die Phylogenie der Pflanzen, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1959.
Die Telomtheorie. Stuttgart, 1965.
Evolution und Naturphilosophie. Berlin, 1968.
Vererbung “erworbener Eigenschaften” und Auslese, 2nd ed. Stuttgart, 1969.

D. V. LEBEDEV

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.