Haberlandt, Gottlieb

(b. Ungarisch-Altenburg, Hungary, 28 November 1854; d. Berlin, Germany, 30 January 1945)

botany.

Haberlandt’s father was professor of applied botany and introduced him to botany at an early age. Despite great interest and talent in music, painting, and German literature, he studied botany. Julius Wiesner in Vienna became his first teacher and supervised the work on his Ph. D., which he obtained in 1876. Julius von Sachs’s textbook of botany influenced him greatly, but he decided to work under Simon Schwendener at Tübingen in 1877–1878. Schwendener’s book Das mechanische Prinzip im anatomischen Bau der Monokotylen strengthened his belief that anatomy and physiology should be combined. After serving as Priualdozent at Vienna, Haberlandt moved to Graz, where he succeeded H. Leitgeb in 1888. In 1910 he replaced Schwendener at Berlin, where he established the Institute for Plant Physiology. After his retirement in 1923 he remained in Berlin, where he died in 1945.

Haberlandt’s most influential book was Physiologische Pflanzenanatomie (1884), which he updated and enlarged through six editions. This work considers plant anatomy from a physiological point of view: structures are explained by’ their functions, not in a finalistic-vitalistic sense but teleologically, on the basis of selection theory. Using functional criteria, Haberlandt distinguishes twelve tissue systems and many more tissues in his anatomico-physiological classification. Although this specific classification was not adopted, many of his basic ideas have been incorporated into modern biology. At first Haberlandt’s ideas met with great resistance and were ridiculed by many of his colleagues. H. A. de Bary called his book the “newest botanical novel;’ and it was said that some of his colleagues tried to hide it from their students so that they would not “go astray.”

Another book of interest to the layman is Haberlandt’s Eine botanische Tropenreise (1893), in which he describes his trip to Java and Ceylon in 1891- 1892. Haberlandt wrote a number of other books and numerous papers. Many of these publications, especially the earlier ones, deal with functional investigations of plant structures such as stinging hairs, guard cells, oil glands, hydathodes, and all sorts of tissues. After a study on stimulus transmission in the sensitive plant (1890), Haberlandt concentrated on investigations of sense organs. He hypothesized—simultaneously with and independently of B. Nemeč—the statolith function of certain starch grains, thus exerting a lasting influence on plant physiology. His later work dealt mainly with experimental morphogenesis and physiology and established new experimental approaches. As early as 1902 Haberlandt reported on partially successful attempts at cell cultures. In 1921 he postulated the existence of wound hormones which induce mitoses in the cell cultures. He related this finding to fertilization, parthenogenesis, and formation of adventitious embryos and periderm. Several papers deal with the phenomenon of Crataegomespilus, graft hybrids between Crataegus and Mespilus. His last publication (1941) is on the nature of morphogenic substances.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Haberlandt’s articles and books are listed in the paper by Guttenberg (see below). His books are Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des mechanischen Gewebesystem der Pflanzen (Leipzig, 1879); Die physiologischen Leistungen der Pflanzengewebe, vol. II of Heinrich Schenck, Handbuch der Botanik (Breslau, 1882); Physiologische Pflanzenanatomie (Leipzig, 1884; 6th ed ., 1924), 4th ed . translated into English as Physiological Plant Anatomy (London, 1914); Das reizleitende Gewebesystem der Sinnpflanze (Leipzig, 1890); Eine botanische Tropenreise Indomalaische Vegetationsbilder and Reiseskizzen (Leipzig, 1893; 2nd ed., 1910); Sinnesorgane im Pflanzenreich (Leipzig, 1901); Die Lichtsinnesorgane der Laubblktter (Leipzig, 1905); Berliner Botaniker in der Geschichte der Pflanzenphysiologie (Berlin, 1914); Goethe und die PJlanzenphysiologie (Leipzig, 1923); Erinnerungen, Bekenntnisse und Betrachtungen (Berlin, 1933); and Botanisches Vademecum für Künstler (Jena, 1936).

II. Secondary Literature. See H. von Guttenberg, “Gottlieb Haberlandt,” in Phyton, 6 (1955), 1–88; A. D. Krikorian and D. L. Berquam, “Plant Cell and Tissue Cultures: The Role of Haberlandt,” in Botanical Review, 35 (1969), 59–88, which includes an English trans. of Haberlandt’s original paper (1902) reporting nonsterile culture of isolated plant cells (that did not divide) and pointing out the purposes and potentialities of culture techniques for physiological and morphological problems; A. C. Noé, “Gottlieb Haberlandt,” in Plant Physiology, 9 (1934), 851–855; and O. Renner, in Jahrbuch der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Math-nat. Kl ., for 1944–1948 (1948), pp . 258–261.

R. Sattler