In the history of botany, Erich von Tschermak occupies the ground between patient observation and the larger claims it makes possible.
Erich von Tschermak was born at Vienna in 1871. His recorded nationality is Austria–Hungary. He was educated at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg.
Around the turn of the twentieth century the sciences fractured into specialisms and simultaneously became national assets, funded and directed on a scale no earlier generation had seen.
He held appointments at University of Vienna, where the work centred on botany and genetics.
Botany is where description becomes science: naming a plant correctly is the first step to knowing what it can do.
Working from Austria–Hungary shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
His work was formally recognised with the honorary doctor of the University of Vienna, Goethe Medal for Art and Science and Ring of Honour of the City of Vienna.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Botany is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
Erich von Tschermak died in 1962 at the age of 91. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Held posts at University of Vienna
- Educated at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
- Fields of research: botany and genetics
