Obituaries

Abstract

A VETERAN botanist of striking personality, Prof. Ludwig Radlkofer, has recently been removed by death in his ninety-eighth year, on Feb. 16 last. He was born in Munich on Dec. 19, 1829, took the degree of M.D. at that University in 1854, of Ph.D. at Jena the following year, and in 1863 became professor of botany in his native city. He began his career as an author in 1855, soon being attracted to the Sapindaceoe, especially the genus Serjania, which he monographed in 1875, returning to it more than once, and continuing to write even so late as the last few months. He received many distinctions abroad, and was elected a foreign member of the Linnean Society of London in 1897. He claimed to have been the first to introduce the anatomical method in academical teaching, and was very anxious that his pupil, Dr. Hans Solereder (1860–1920), should be permitted to examine the Linnean herbarium and also the older plant collections in the British Museum such as the Clifford and Sloane herbaria. He introduced the topic at the Norwich meeting of the British Association in 1868 by his paper “On the Structural Peculiarities of Certain Sapindaceous Plants,”and again in 1885 at Aberdeen “On the Application of the Anatomical Method to the Determination of the Linnean and other Herbaria.” Needless to say, this proposal that every specimen should be so examined could not be entertained, as it involved the practical destruction of the types destined for the information of later generations of botanists.