Rudolf Jakob Camerarius

Rudolf Jakob Camerarius

Rudolf Jakob Camerarius (1665-1721)
Born February 12, 1665
Tübingen, Holy Roman Empire
Died September 11, 1721
Tübingen, Holy Roman Empire
Nationality German
Fields Botanist and physician
Doctoral advisor Elias Rudolph Camerarius Sr.
Georg Balthasar Metzger
Doctoral students Johann Andreas Planer
Notes

Rudolf Jakob Camerarius or Camerer (February 12, 1665 – September 11, 1721) was a German botanist and physician.

Life

Camerarius was born at Tübingen, and became professor of medicine and director of the botanical gardens at Tübingen in 1687. He is chiefly known for his investigations on the reproductive organs of plants (De sexu plantarum epistola (1694)).[1]

While other botanists, such as John Ray and Nehemiah Grew, had observed that plants seemed to have sex in some form, and guessed that pollen was the male fertilizing agent, it was Camerarius who did experimental work. In studying the mulberry, he determined that female plants not near to male (staminate) plants produced fruit but with no seeds. Mercurialis and spinach plants fared likewise. With the castor oil plant (Ricinus) and with maize he cut off the staminate flowers (the "tassels" of maize), and likewise observed that no seeds formed. His results were reported in the form of a letter (the epistola), and attracted immediate attention, subsequent workers extending his results from the monoecious plants he had studied to dioecious ones as well.

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References

External links

Media related to Rudolf Jakob Camerarius at Wikimedia Commons


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