Richard Wettstein worked in natural history at a period when the field was still deciding what counted as an answer.
Richard Wettstein was born at Vienna in 1863. His recorded nationality is Austria–Hungary. He was educated at University of Vienna.
The nineteenth century professionalised science. Laboratories acquired budgets, universities acquired chairs, and for the first time a person could be a scientist by occupation rather than by inclination.
He held appointments at Charles University and University of Vienna, where the work centred on botany.
Natural history is what science looked like before it split into specialisms, and it produced observers of formidable range.
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.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Natural history is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
Richard Wettstein died in 1931 at the age of 68. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Held posts at Charles University and University of Vienna
- Educated at University of Vienna
- Fields of research: botany
