Hans Christian Lyngbye (29 June 1782 – 18 May 1837) was a Danish priest and

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 ...

, specialising in

algae Algae (; singular alga ) is an informal term for a large and diverse group of photosynthetic eukaryotic organisms. It is a polyphyletic grouping that includes species from multiple distinct clades. Included organisms range from unicellular mic ...

Life

Hans Christian Lyngbye was born in

Aalborg Aalborg (, , ) is Denmark's fourth largest town (behind Copenhagen, Aarhus, and Odense) with a population of 119,862 (1 July 2022) in the town proper and an urban population of 143,598 (1 July 2022). As of 1 July 2022, the Municipality of Aalb ...

, Denmark, in 1782, the son of a teacher, Jens Michelsen Lyngbye. He attended the Latin school in Aalborg until 1802 when he took as his tutor a priest on the island of Vendsyssel. He studied botany and theology and graduated in 1812. He then worked with the botanist

Niels Hofman Bang Niels is a male given name, equivalent to Nicholas, which is common in Denmark, Belgium, Norway (formerly) and the Netherlands. The Norwegian and Swedish variant is Nils. The name is a developed short form of Nicholas or Greek Nicolaos after Saint ...

which awoke his interest in algae. He won a competition set by the University of Copenhagen and as a result, Hornemann paid for the printing of his work on algae, ''Tentamen Hydrophytologiæ Danica'', which was published in 1819. It contained meticulous descriptions of 321 species of marine algae with illustrations of 70, including 7 new genera and 50 new species, and raised awareness of the algal flora of Denmark, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. He visited the Faroe Islands in 1817 and wrote a treatise on pilot whales and whaling. He was also fascinated by the old Faroese fables and ballads and made a collection of them, going so far as to learn the old Faroese language in order to be able to write them down. One of these was

Loka Táttur ''Loka Táttur'' or ''Lokka Táttur'' (tale, or ''þáttr'' of Loki) is a Faroese ballad (Corpus Carminum Færoensium 13D) which is a rare example of the occurrence of Norse gods in folklore. The ballad probably dates back to the late Middle Ages ...

, a rare depiction of Norse gods in folklore. From 1819, he worked as a priest, first at Gjesing and Nørager and later on the coast at Søborg and Gilleleje. Here he was able to pursue his studies of

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

.Lyngbye, Hans Christian
/ref> In 1836, he wrote a dissertation for a doctorate degree, but it remained forgotten in the pocket of the cloak worn by the messenger conveying it to the University of Copenhagen and it missed the deadline. He died the following year. The botanical part of the thesis was published in 1879. The genus of blue-green algae, '' Lyngbya'', was named in his honour.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Lyngbye, Hans Christian 1782 births 1837 deaths 19th-century Danish botanists Danish phycologists People from Aalborg