Anton Kerner von Marilaun



Anton Kerner Ritter von Marilaun, or Anton Joseph Kerner, (12 November 1831 – 21 June 1898) was an Austrian botanist and professor at the University of Vienna.

Career
Kerner was born in Mautern, Lower Austria, and studied medicine in Vienna followed by an education in natural history, for which he carried out phytosociologic studies in Central Europe. In 1858 Kerner was appointed professor of botany at the Polytechnic Institute at Buda, and then in 1860 was appointed professor of natural history at the University of Innsbruck. He resigned the latter position in 1878 to become professor of systematic botany at the University of Vienna, and also curator of the botanical garden there. As part of his expansive exsiccata series Flora exsiccata Austro-Hungarica, which he started in 1881, von Marilaun recruited botanists as collectors including Karl Eggerth and later as editor including Richard Wettstein.

Kerner was particularly active in the fields of phytogeography and phytosociology. He died in 1898 in Vienna at the age of 67.

He said "… and years pass by until a second generation [of plants] can develop stronger and richer on the prepared soil; but restless works the plant kingdom and constructs its green building further; on the corpses of perished roots, new, younger plant forms germinate, and so it goes on in tireless change until, finally, the shady treetops of a high forest murmur above a humus rich soil."

Publications
One of his most important works. In 1867, he finished the publication of the results of his studies with respect to the limits of vegetation of more than a thousand species of plants.
 * Das Pflanzenleben der Donauländer (The Background of Plant Ecology, translated by Henry S. Conard, 1951), Innsbruck, 1863. This book established his reputation and reports on his botanical explorations in Hungary.
 * Die Kultur der Alpenflanzen, 1864. On the culture of alpine plants.
 * Die botanischen Gärten, 1874. A sketch of a model botanical garden.
 * Vegetationsverhältnisse des mittlern und östlichen Ungarn und Siebenbürgen, Innsbruck, 1875.
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