SCHIMPER, KARL FRIEDRICH

(b. Mannheim, Germany, 15 February 1803: d. Schewetzinger near Heidelberg, Germany, 21 December 1867)

botany, geology, zoology, meteorology.

Schimper’s father was a mathematics teacher and later a government engineer: his mother, Meta, Baroness furtenbach, came from a noble family of Nuremberg. Their uncongenial marriage ended in divorce. Schimper and his younger brother thus had an unhappy childhood, all the more so since their father had a very modest income, Schimper gained such a broad knowledge of plants during his school days in mannheim that his teacher, F. W. L. Succow, asked him to collaborate on his Flora Manhemiensis. In 1822 Schimper began to study theology at the University of Heidelbert because it was the only subject for which he could obtain a scholarship. In 1826 he turned to the study of medicine and became friends with Alexander Braun and Louis Agassiz. the three continued their studies at Munich in 1827 –1828, and in 1829 they received their doctorates. Braun and Agassiz returned home, but Schimper remained in Munich until 1841.

Schimper hoped to embark on an academic career in Munich but was unable to obtain a post. After a short stay in Zweibrücken (Rhenish Palatinate) he returned, disappointed and poor, to Mannheim. His situation did not improve until 1845, when the grand duke of the Rhenish Palatinate awarded him a small annuity. He also encountered difficulties in Mannheim, and in 1849 he moved to nearby Schwetzingen, where he spent the rest his life. Lacking a permanent position and a regular income, he was constantly in financial difficulties. This period was interrupted only by stay at Jena in 1854–1855. In 1856 Schimper’s friends and admirers sought unsuccessfully to procure a professorship of botany for him. He died of dropsy in 1867, following months of confinement to bed. He was engaged twice, the second time to a sister of Alexander Braun. Neither engagement led to marriage.

In botany Schimper’s principal concern was to formulate a theory of phyllotaxy. He pointed out that leaves that grow in spiral formations are arranged in regular, cyclic patterns and that each species has a characteristic pattern. He also dealt with the unequal, eccentric growth in thickness of branches of deciduous and coniferous trees (epinasty and hyponasty), with the morphology and physiology of plant roots, with the heterophyly of certain aquatic plants (variation in the forms of the leaves, depending on the depth of the water), and with water transport in mosses. Since his school days Schimper had had a good knowledge of floristics and systematics. besides the Mannheim flora, he collaborated on the Flora Friburgenis with F. C. L. Spenner. A catalog of the mosses of Baden that Schimper planned to publish in the last years of his life never appeared, as was the case with many of his projects.

Since his days in Munich, Schimper had been interested in prehistoric animals. He did not, however, undertake specific research of particular groups of fossils, desiring instead to formulate an overall view. In “Eintheilung und Succession der Organismen” he proposed the existence of a succession of different faunas. They, and the floras that accompanied them, were related to each other; but phases of development (Belebungen) were, he held, separated by periods of desolation (Verödungen). Schimper expressed his ideas, which contradicted Cuvier’s catastrophist theory, in a schema similar to a genealogical tree. Much of this account was similar to the theory of evolution, but Schimper completely rejected the theory of natural selection later formulated by Darwin.

In geology Schimper was especially interested in the traces of Pleistocene glaciers that he detected in the northern Alpine footills, notably in Bavaria, Switzerland, and the Black Forest. This study led him to the concept of the “Ice Age”, which he discussed in a paper presented in 1837 to the congress of Swiss scientists held at Neuchâtel. The paper gave rise to an unpleasant priority dispute with Louis Agassiz that was not decided in Schimper’s favor until much late. Through his investigations in the Bavarian Calcareous Alps, Schimper recognized in 1840 that the Alps had not been raised by a force acting from below but had emerged as the result of horizontal pressure’in the same way that a range of folded mountains is created. The pressure was generated, he speculated, by the shrinking of the earth’s core. These views anticipated the contraction theory proposed by Suess in 1875.

In 1843 Schimper presented a paper on prehistoric climatic conditions and postulated an alternations of warm and cold periods in the earth’s history. Accordingly. his Ice Age was preceded by warmer weather. Further, he interpreted desiccation cracks and raindrop impressions in the Triassic of southern Germany as evidence of the existence, during a given period, of a dry or a moist climate. From the evidence of postglacial calcareous tuffs in Upper Bavaria and the annual rings in Triassic silicified trees, Schimper deduced the existence of change of seasons in the period he studied. Finally, he contended that the snails occurring in the pleistocene loess indicated their emergence in a cool climate.

In hydrology and meteorology Schimper made a series of new and stimulating observations for which he proposed ingenious explanations. Among the topics he treated were the refraction and reflection of light in inland waters and their effect on plant life, the attenuation of the reflection of light from the surface of bodies of water because of the presence of pollen, and the formation of ice on rivers.

Schimper expressed many of his scientific ideas in poems. Several hundred of these are known, and they encompass the most varies verse forms. Their artistic merit has been quite variously judged. Schimper was an extraordinarily versatile scientist. but almost all of his publications have a preliminary or fragmentary character. He frequently planned to publish large-scale works but never carried out his intentions. Consequently, many of his results fell into neglect or were taken over and developed by other, with their origin often forgotten. This circumstance, together with his volcanic temperament and a certain lack of objectivity and of consideration for his colleagues, surely contributed to the difficulties that marked Schimper’s personal life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Schimper’s writings include “Vorträge über die Möglichkeit eines Verstäandnisses der Blattstellung”. in Flora. 18 , no. 1 (1835), 145–192: “Vortrag über Blattstellungstheorie”, in Verhandlungen der Versammlung der Schweizerischen naturforschenden Gesellschaft, 22 (1836), 114–117: “Auszug aus dem Schreiben des Herrn Dr. Schimper über die Eiszeit ...,” ibid.,23 (1837), 38–51: Gedichte (Erlangen, 1841): “über den Bau der bayerischen Kalkalpen”, in Amtlicher Bericht über die 18. Versammlung der Geselschaft deutscher Naturforscher und ärzte zu Erlangen (1841), 93–;100: über die Witterungsphasen der Vorwelt, Entwurf zu einem Vortrage bei Gelegenheit der zehnten suftungsfeier und Generalversammlung des Mannheimer Vereins für Naturkunde (Mannheim, 1843): Gedichte 1840–1846 (Mannheim, 1847): “über hyponastische, epinastische und diplonastische Gewächse.,” in Amtlicher Bericht über die Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und ärzte zu Göttingen (1854), 87–88: Natursonette... eine Weihnachtsgabe für Gebildete (Jena, 1854), “Nützliches Allerlei von der ganzen Pflanze; Auswahi förderlichster Thatsachen aus der Morphologies”, in Amtlicher Bericht über die Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und ärzte zu Beonn (1857), 129–132, 137–138; “Wasser und Sonnenschein der die Durchsichtigkeit und der Glanz der Gewässer betrachtet nach ihrem Einfluss auf die Entwickelungen organischer und geologiescher Art am äussern des Erdballs”, in Festschrift der Naturforschenden Gesekkschaft zu Emden (Emden, 1865), 37–66: and “Uber Eintheilung und succession der Organismen”, L. Eyrich, ed., in Jahresbericht des Minnheimer Vereins für Naturkunde for 1878–1882, (1882), 1–36.

II. Secondary Literature. See L. Eyrich “Nachrede zum Vortrage von Dr. K.F. Schimper...,” in Jahreshericht des Mannheimer vereins für Naturkunde for 1878–1882 (1882), 37–64, with biographical data. poems, and bibliography: R. Lauterborn, “Kari Friedrich Schimper, Leben und Schaffen eines deutschen Naturforschers”, in “Der Rhein. Naturgeschichte eines deutschen Stromes”, in Berichte der Naturforschenden Gesellschaft in Freiburg i.Br., 33 (1934), 269–324, with bibligraphical data and portrait: and G. H. O. volger, Leben und Leistungen des Naturforschers K. Schimper (Frankfurt, 1889).

Heinz Tobien