Hugo Wilhelm Conwentz (20 January 1855, Sankt Albrecht near Danzig – 12 May 1922) was a German botanist. He is best known for his

paleobotany Paleobotany, which is also spelled as palaeobotany, is the branch of botany dealing with the recovery and identification of plant remains from geological contexts, and their use for the biological reconstruction of past environments (paleogeogr ...

studies of Baltic

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In Ma ...

. He studied in

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...

and

Göttingen Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a college town, university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the Capital (political), capital of Göttingen (district), the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, t ...

. Beginning in 1876 he conducted paleobotanical studies as an assistant to

Heinrich Göppert Johann Heinrich Robert Göppert (25 July 1800 – 18 May 1884) was a German botanist and paleontologist. Career He was born in Sprottau, Lower Silesia, and died at Breslau. In 1831 he became a professor of botany, as well as curator of the bo ...

in Breslau. In 1879 he was appointed director of the ''Westpreußischen Provinzialmuseums'' (

West Prussia The Province of West Prussia (german: Provinz Westpreußen; csb, Zôpadné Prësë; pl, Prusy Zachodnie) was a province of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and 1878 to 1920. West Prussia was established as a province of the Kingdom of Prussia in 177 ...

n Provincial Museum) in Danzig, a position he held for thirty years. In 1906 he became state commissioner of the newly founded ''Staatliche Stelle für Naturdenkmalpflege in Preußen'', a regulatory body for natural heritage conservation in Prussia.

Selected works

* ''Monographie der baltischen bernsteinbäume'', 1890 – Monograph of Baltic amber trees. * ''Untersuchungen über fossile hölzer Schwedens'', 1892 – Studies of fossil woods of

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. * ''Die Gefährdung der Naturdenkmäler und Vorschläge zu ihrer Erhaltung'', 1904 – The threat to natural monuments and proposals for their preservation. * ''Beiträge zur Naturdenkmalpflege'', (editor) 1910 – Contributions to natural heritage conservation.HathiTrust Digital Library
(published works).

Eponymy

References

1855 births 1922 deaths Scientists from Gdańsk 19th-century German botanists Paleobotanists 20th-century German botanists {{Germany-biologist-stub