Biography

German botanist. Hubert Winkler was born in Prenzlau and began his studies in 1895 at Breslau University. At first he studied theology, but later dedicated himself to botany, earning his doctoral degree in 1901. He remained at Breslau for most of the rest of his life, initially working as an assistant at the Breslau Botanical Garden and Museum from 1901-1902 before spending two years in Berlin at the Botanical Museum there. He then travelled to Cameroon, Africa, to take up a position at the Victoria Botanic Garden, but after two years moved back to Breslau as a lecturer at the university. He was appointed titular professor in 1912 and subsequently extraordinary professor of plant geography (1921) and ordinary professor in 1927.

Winkler carried out botanical explorations in the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Indonesia in 1908, where he collected rattan plants and seed for importation to the German colonies in Africa and the Pacific, as well as dried specimens. He travelled to East Africa in 1910, where he made further collections of botanical material. His work at Breslau was also interrupted by active service during World War I. Winkler earned a reputation as an authority on tropical botany, authoring papers on the vegetation of Borneo and on the Urticaceae family in New Guinea and Malaysia. He completed a volume on Betulaceae in A. Engler's Pflanzenreich and sections on Musaceae, Cannaceae and Linaceae in Engler and Prantl's Die Natürlichen Pfanzenfamilien (1930-1931).

Sources:
J.H. Barnhart, 1965, Biographical Notes Upon Botanists, 3: 507
I.H. Burkill, 1927, "Botanical Collectors, Collections and Collecting Places in the Malay Peninsula", Gardens' Bulletin, Straits Settlements, 4(4-5): 134
M.J. van Steenis Kruseman, "Cyclopedia of Collectors", Flora Malesiana, online edn:
http://www.nationaalherbarium.nl/FMCollectors/W/WinklerHubert.htm, accessed 7 December 2010
M. Unruh, 1941, Berichte der Deutschen Botanischen Gesellschaft, 59: (145)-(169).