Simon Schwendener was a Swiss botanist who was a native of Buchs

Buchs, St. Gallen

Buchs is a municipality in the Wahlkreis of Werdenberg in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland.-Geography:Buchs has an area, , of . Of this area, 39.6% is used for agricultural purposes, while 27.8% is forested...

 in the Canton of St. Gallen

Canton of St. Gallen

The Canton of St. Gallen is a canton of Switzerland. St. Gallen is located in the north east of Switzerland. It covers an area of 2,026 km², and has a population of . , the population included 97,461 foreigners, or about 20.9% of the total population. The capital is St. Gallen. Spelling...

.

In 1856 he received his doctorate at the University of Zurich

University of Zurich

The University of Zurich , located in the city of Zurich, is the largest university in Switzerland, with over 25,000 students. It was founded in 1833 from the existing colleges of theology, law, medicine and a new faculty of philosophy....

, where afterwards he was an assistant to Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli (1817-1891). In 1860 he became a professor of botany at
the University of Munich, and in 1867 a professor of botany and director of the Botanical Gardens in Basel

Basel

Basel or Basle In the national languages of Switzerland the city is also known as Bâle , Basilea and Basilea is Switzerland's third most populous city with about 166,000 inhabitants. Located where the Swiss, French and German borders meet, Basel also has suburbs in France and Germany...

. In 1877 he succeeded Wilhelm Hofmeister

Wilhelm Hofmeister

Wilhelm Friedrich Benedikt Hofmeister was a German biologist and botanist. He "stands as one of the true giants in the history of biology and belongs in the same pantheon as Darwin and Mendel." He was largely self-taught....

 (1824-1877) as professor of botany at the University of Tübingen, and from 1878 until his retirement in 1910, Schwendener was a professor at the University of Berlin.

Simon Schwendener is remembered for his investigations of plant anatomy

Plant anatomy

Plant anatomy or phytotomy is the general term for the study of the internal structure of plants. While originally it included plant morphology, which is the description of the physical form and external structure of plants, since the mid-20th century the investigations of plant anatomy are...

 and physiology

Plant physiology

Plant physiology is a subdiscipline of botany concerned with the functioning, or physiology, of plants. Closely related fields include plant morphology , plant ecology , phytochemistry , cell biology, and molecular biology.Fundamental processes such as photosynthesis, respiration, plant nutrition,...

, being interested in the inter-relationship between a plant's construction and its functionality. He took a mechanistic approach to his botanical studies, believing that a plant's anatomical structure conformed to principles of mechanics. He conducted extensive research on the mechanics of sap

Sap

Sap may refer to:* Plant sap, the fluid transported in xylem cells or phloem sieve tube elements of a plant* Sap , a village in the Dunajská Streda District of Slovakia...

 ascent, the construction of a leaf's pulvinus

Pulvinus

A pulvinus is a joint-like thickening at the base of a plant leaf or leaflet that facilitates growth-independent movement. It consists of a core of vascular tissue within a flexible, bulky cylinder of thin-walled parenchyma cells...

, the positioning of a plants' leaves, and the inner-workings between stomata and its guard cells.

In 1867 Schwendener announced to the scientific world his hypothesis that lichen

Lichen

Lichens are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic organism composed of a fungus with a photosynthetic partner , usually either a green alga or cyanobacterium...

 was formed by two separate organisms, a fungus

Fungus

A fungus is a member of a large group of eukaryotic organisms that includes microorganisms such as yeasts and molds , as well as the more familiar mushrooms. These organisms are classified as a kingdom, Fungi, which is separate from plants, animals, and bacteria...

 and an alga. At the time his theory was largely rejected, but afterwards proven to be factual. During his long career he had several renowned students and assistants, including Carl Correns

Carl Correns

Carl Erich Correns was a German botanist and geneticist, who is notable primarily for his independent discovery of the principles of heredity, and for his rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's earlier paper on that subject, which he achieved simultaneously but independently of the botanists Erich...

, Gottlieb Haberlandt

Gottlieb Haberlandt

Gottlieb Haberlandt was an Austrian botanist.Haberlandt first pointed out the possibilities of the culture of isolated tissues...

, Richard Kolkwitz

Richard Kolkwitz

Richard Kolkwitz was a German botanist who was a native of Berlin. He studied natural sciences at the University of Berlin under Adolf Engler and Simon Schwendener , and from 1895 to 1900 was an assistant at the university under Leopold Kny...

, Emil Heinricher

Emil Johann Lambert Heinricher

Emil Johann Lambert Heinricher was an Austrian botanist from Laibach . In 1879 he received his doctorate at Graz, and later was an assistant to Simon Schwendener in Berlin and Julius von Sachs in Würzburg...

 and Otto Heinrich Warburg

Otto Heinrich Warburg

Otto Heinrich Warburg , son of physicist Emil Warburg, was a German physiologist, medical doctor and Nobel laureate. He served as an officer in the elite Uhlan during the First World War and won the Iron Cross for bravery. Warburg was one of the twentieth century's leading biochemists...

.

Select writings

• Das mechanische prinzip in anatomie Bau der Monokotylen (1874).
• Die mechanische Theorie der Blattstellung (1878).
• Über Bau und Mechanik der Spaltöffnungen (1881).
• Gesammelte botanische Abhandlung (1898).