Biography

German botanist, physician and early cytologist. A protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, Meyen collected plants around the world and completed pioneering works on plant anatomy. A contemporary of other early plant cell theorists, he was the first to distinguish growth by cell division from free cell formation.

Franz Meyen was born in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Russia), and studied medicine in Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuania) and Berlin. After qualifying at the Friedrich Wilhelms Institute, he practiced as a physician in the Charité hospital of Berlin from 1826-1827. He then served as a military physician, a role which took him to Cologne, Bonn and Potsdam.

In his own time Meyen pursued a keen interest in botany, particularly plant anatomy. He used microscopes to study the fine structure of plants and published his first work on plant anatomy, Anatomische-Physiologische Untersuchungen über den Inhalt der Pflanzen-Zellen (Anatomical Analysis of Plant Cells), in 1828. He was elected to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in this year, though it was his botany textbook of 1830, Phytotomie, that cemented his reputation. Published when he was just 25, it reviewed both the microscopic structures viewed within plants and also attempted to identify the movement of fluids and their functions at that level. To appreciate how groundbreaking Meyen's work was, it is worth noting that though the discovery of the cell nucleus is usually attributed to the Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) in 1831, Meyen had already identified the element in the green algae Spirogyra in 1826.

Recommended by Alexander von Humboldt, in 1830 Meyen was offered the opportunity to travel as naturalist and ship's surgeon on a round-the-world expedition aboard the Prinzessin Luise. The three-year voyage took him to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Polynesia and China, where he collected many hundreds of plant and animal specimens. On his return he published several volumes on the trip and described the many new species he had encountered, including the Humboldt Penguin.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bonn and was made a professor of botany at the University of Berlin in 1834 (again on the recommendation of Humboldt). He next published Grundriss der Pflanzengeographie (The Geography of Plants, 1836), in which he attempted to correlate the distribution of vegetation with soil and climate, and produced a further three-volume treatise on plant anatomy between 1837 and 1839, Neues System der Pflanzen-Physiologie (On Plant Physiology). It was in this work that he expounded on his investigations to show that the division of previous cells formed new cells, in contrast to the theory of growth given by cell theory founder M.J. Schleiden (1804-1881) that the nucleus formed de novo from fluids. Unfortunately Meyen's name was left in the sidelines in the history of cytology as he died before he could contribute further to the development of cell theory, not having reached 40 years of age. The genus Meyenia Nees commemorated him, though alas even in this he was to be overshadowed, by its synonym, Thunbergia Retz.

Sources:
K. Mägdefrau, 1973, Geschichte der Botanik: 312
L.W. Sharp, 1921, An Introduction to Cytology: 6-7
E. Wunschmann, 1885, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 21: 549-553.

Biography

German botanist, physician and early cytologist. A protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, Meyen collected plants around the world and completed pioneering works on plant anatomy. A contemporary of other early plant cell theorists, he was the first to distinguish growth by cell division from free cell formation.

Franz Meyen was born in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Russia), and studied medicine in Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuania) and Berlin. After qualifying at the Friedrich Wilhelms Institute, he practiced as a physician in the Charité hospital of Berlin from 1826-1827. He then served as a military physician, a role which took him to Cologne, Bonn and Potsdam.

In his own time Meyen pursued a keen interest in botany, particularly plant anatomy. He used microscopes to study the fine structure of plants and published his first work on plant anatomy, Anatomische-Physiologische Untersuchungen über den Inhalt der Pflanzen-Zellen (Anatomical Analysis of Plant Cells), in 1828. He was elected to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in this year, though it was his botany textbook of 1830, Phytotomie, that cemented his reputation. Published when he was just 25, it reviewed both the microscopic structures viewed within plants and also attempted to identify the movement of fluids and their functions at that level. To appreciate how groundbreaking Meyen's work was, it is worth noting that though the discovery of the cell nucleus is usually attributed to the Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) in 1831, Meyen had already identified the element in the green algae Spirogyra in 1826.

Recommended by Alexander von Humboldt, in 1830 Meyen was offered the opportunity to travel as naturalist and ship's surgeon on a round-the-world expedition aboard the Prinzessin Luise. The three-year voyage took him to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Polynesia and China, where he collected many hundreds of plant and animal specimens. On his return he published several volumes on the trip and described the many new species he had encountered, including the Humboldt Penguin.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bonn and was made a professor of botany at the University of Berlin in 1834 (again on the recommendation of Humboldt). He next published Grundriss der Pflanzengeographie (The Geography of Plants, 1836), in which he attempted to correlate the distribution of vegetation with soil and climate, and produced a further three-volume treatise on plant anatomy between 1837 and 1839, Neues System der Pflanzen-Physiologie (On Plant Physiology). It was in this work that he expounded on his investigations to show that the division of previous cells formed new cells, in contrast to the theory of growth given by cell theory founder M.J. Schleiden (1804-1881) that the nucleus formed de novo from fluids. Unfortunately Meyen's name was left in the sidelines in the history of cytology as he died before he could contribute further to the development of cell theory, not having reached 40 years of age. The genus Meyenia Nees commemorated him, though alas even in this he was to be overshadowed, by its synonym, Thunbergia Retz.

Sources:
K. Mägdefrau, 1973, Geschichte der Botanik: 312
L.W. Sharp, 1921, An Introduction to Cytology: 6-7
E. Wunschmann, 1885, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 21: 549-553.

Biography

German botanist, physician and early cytologist. A protégé of Alexander von Humboldt, Meyen collected plants around the world and completed pioneering works on plant anatomy. A contemporary of other early plant cell theorists, he was the first to distinguish growth by cell division from free cell formation.

Franz Meyen was born in Tilsit, East Prussia (now Sovetsk, Russia), and studied medicine in Memel (now Klaipeda, Lithuania) and Berlin. After qualifying at the Friedrich Wilhelms Institute, he practiced as a physician in the Charité hospital of Berlin from 1826-1827. He then served as a military physician, a role which took him to Cologne, Bonn and Potsdam.

In his own time Meyen pursued a keen interest in botany, particularly plant anatomy. He used microscopes to study the fine structure of plants and published his first work on plant anatomy, Anatomische-Physiologische Untersuchungen über den Inhalt der Pflanzen-Zellen (Anatomical Analysis of Plant Cells), in 1828. He was elected to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in this year, though it was his botany textbook of 1830, Phytotomie, that cemented his reputation. Published when he was just 25, it reviewed both the microscopic structures viewed within plants and also attempted to identify the movement of fluids and their functions at that level. To appreciate how groundbreaking Meyen's work was, it is worth noting that though the discovery of the cell nucleus is usually attributed to the Scottish botanist Robert Brown (1773-1858) in 1831, Meyen had already identified the element in the green algae Spirogyra in 1826.

Recommended by Alexander von Humboldt, in 1830 Meyen was offered the opportunity to travel as naturalist and ship's surgeon on a round-the-world expedition aboard the Prinzessin Luise. The three-year voyage took him to Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Polynesia and China, where he collected many hundreds of plant and animal specimens. On his return he published several volumes on the trip and described the many new species he had encountered, including the Humboldt Penguin.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Bonn and was made a professor of botany at the University of Berlin in 1834 (again on the recommendation of Humboldt). He next published Grundriss der Pflanzengeographie (The Geography of Plants, 1836), in which he attempted to correlate the distribution of vegetation with soil and climate, and produced a further three-volume treatise on plant anatomy between 1837 and 1839, Neues System der Pflanzen-Physiologie (On Plant Physiology). It was in this work that he expounded on his investigations to show that the division of previous cells formed new cells, in contrast to the theory of growth given by cell theory founder M.J. Schleiden (1804-1881) that the nucleus formed de novo from fluids. Unfortunately Meyen's name was left in the sidelines in the history of cytology as he died before he could contribute further to the development of cell theory, not having reached 40 years of age. The genus Meyenia Nees commemorated him, though alas even in this he was to be overshadowed, by its synonym, Thunbergia Retz.

Sources:
K. Mägdefrau, 1973, Geschichte der Botanik: 312
L.W. Sharp, 1921, An Introduction to Cytology: 6-7
E. Wunschmann, 1885, Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 21: 549-553.