Biography

German physician, mycologist and protistologist from Frankfurt am Main, often cited as 'Bary'. He trained in medicine at Heidelberg, Marburg and the University of Berlin before briefly practicing in Frankfurt but found that fungi were more interesting. He gained a reputation as the founder of modern mycology, discovering sexual reproduction in fungi, recording alternation of generations in rust fungi and first proposed the concept of symbiosis from his study of lichens. He was an assistant to H. von Mohl and lecturer in botany at the University of Tubingen (1853) before succeeding C.W. von Nägeli at the University of Freiburg (1855-1867) and later succeeding D.F.L. von Schlechtendal at the University of Halle (1867).

After the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871) he was appointed to the chair of botany at the University of Strasburg (1872-1888). De Bary was the first specialist myxomycetologist, proposing the name 'mycetezoa' for the slime moulds and considering them to be more closely related to protozoa than the main groups of fungi. They were later shown to be distinct from either animals or fungi and are sometimes regarded as comprising several different kingdoms of the protista. The many genera named after de Bary include the alga Debarya Wittr. and fungi Baryeidamia H. Karst., Debaryella Höhn., Debaryomyces Klöcker and Neobarya Lowen. Though most fungal material at BM was transferred to K (c. 1961) under the Morton Agreement, remaining cryptogamic collections from over 4,000 de Bary micrscope preparations acquired by BM include original myxomycetes.

Biography

German physician, mycologist and protistologist from Frankfurt am Main, often cited as 'Bary'. He trained in medicine at Heidelberg, Marburg and the University of Berlin before briefly practicing in Frankfurt but found that fungi were more interesting. He gained a reputation as the founder of modern mycology, discovering sexual reproduction in fungi, recording alternation of generations in rust fungi and first proposed the concept of symbiosis from his study of lichens. He was an assistant to H. von Mohl and lecturer in botany at the University of Tubingen (1853) before succeeding C.W. von Nägeli at the University of Freiburg (1855-1867) and later succeeding D.F.L. von Schlechtendal at the University of Halle (1867).

After the Franco-Prussian war (1870-1871) he was appointed to the chair of botany at the University of Strasburg (1872-1888). De Bary was the first specialist myxomycetologist, proposing the name 'mycetezoa' for the slime moulds and considering them to be more closely related to protozoa than the main groups of fungi. They were later shown to be distinct from either animals or fungi and are sometimes regarded as comprising several different kingdoms of the protista. The many genera named after de Bary include the alga Debarya Wittr. and fungi Baryeidamia H. Karst., Debaryella Höhn., Debaryomyces Klöcker and Neobarya Lowen. Though most fungal material at BM was transferred to K (c. 1961) under the Morton Agreement, remaining cryptogamic collections from over 4,000 de Bary micrscope preparations acquired by BM include original myxomycetes.