Karl Friedrich von Gaertner von Emil Orth

Karl Friedrich von Gaertner (or Carl Friedrich von Gärtner) (1 May 1772 – 1 September 1850) was a well-known

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

botanist Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek wo ...

, and the son of

Joseph Gaertner Joseph Gaertner (12 March 1732 – 14 July 1791) was a German botanist, best known for his work on seeds, ''De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum'' (1788-1792). Biography He was born in Calw, and studied in Göttingen under Albrecht von Haller. ...

. He was a pioneer in the study of hybrids, and he is considered an important influence on Gregor Mendel. Gärtner, who was a

protestant Protestantism is a Christian denomination, branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Reformation, Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century agai ...

, challenged the doctrine of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

of the "new special creation" which stated that new species of vegetation could arise through hybridization. He defended the stability of species, and argued that although the transmutation of species was evidently possible, the new species would not last because of a ''law of reversion'' which prevented them from spreading freely. As was reported in the words of Mendel: Gärtner is mentioned 17 times in Gregor Mendel's short famous paper '' Experiments on Plant Hybridization'' and 32 times in the first edition of

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

's ''

On the Origin of Species ''On the Origin of Species'' (or, more completely, ''On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life''),The book's full original title was ''On the Origin of Species by Me ...

'.'' He also is the most cited by nominal appearances in the sixth edition of the ''Origin''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gaertner, Karl Friedrich von 1772 births 1850 deaths People from Calw Botanists with author abbreviations 19th-century German botanists German Christians German Protestants Proto-evolutionary biologists