Heinrich Anton de Bary was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 surgeon

Surgery

Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...

, botanist, microbiologist

Microbiologist

A microbiologist is a scientist who works in the field of microbiology. Microbiologists study organisms called microbes. Microbes can take the form of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists...

, and mycologist (fungal systematics

Systematics

Biological systematics is the study of the diversification of terrestrial life, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees...

 and physiology

Physiology

Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...

).

He is considered a founding father of plant pathology (phytopathology

Phytopathology

Plant pathology is the scientific study of plant diseases caused by pathogens and environmental conditions . Organisms that cause infectious disease include fungi, oomycetes, bacteria, viruses, viroids, virus-like organisms, phytoplasmas, protozoa, nematodes and parasitic plants...

) as well as the founder of modern mycology. His extensive and careful studies of the life history of fungi and contribution to the understanding of algae and higher plants were landmarks of biology.

Background

Born in Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

, Anton de Bary was one of ten children born to physician August Theodor de Bary (1802–1873) and Emilie Meyer de Bary. His father encouraged him to join the excursions of the active group of naturalists who collected specimens in the nearby countryside. De Bary’s youthful interest in plants and in examination of fungi and algae were inspired by George Fresenius

Georg Fresenius

Johann Baptist Georg Wolfgang Fresenius was a German physician and botanist, known for his work in the field of phycology. He was a native of Frankfurt am Main....

, a physician, who also taught botany at Senckenberg Institute. Fresenius was an expert on thallophytes. In 1848, de Bary graduated from the Gymnasium at Frankfurt, and began to study medicine at Heidelberg, continued at Marburg. In 1850, he went to Berlin

Humboldt University of Berlin

The Humboldt University of Berlin is Berlin's oldest university, founded in 1810 as the University of Berlin by the liberal Prussian educational reformer and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities...

 to continue pursuing his study of medicine, and also continued to explore and develop his interest in plant science. He received his degree in medicine at Berlin in 1853, but his dissertation title was "De plantarum generatione sexuali", a botanical subject. The same year, he published a book on the fungi that caused rusts and smuts in plants.

Early life

After the graduation, de Bary practiced medicine in Frankfurt, but only for a very short period of time. He was drawn back to botany and became Privatdozent in botany at the University of Tübingen, where he worked as an assistant to Dr. Hugo von Mohl

Hugo von Mohl

Hugo von Mohl was a German botanist from Stuttgart.He was a son of the Württemberg statesman Benjamin Ferdinand von Mohl , the family being connected on both sides with the higher class of state officials of Württemberg...

 (1805–1872) for a while. In 1855, he succeeded the position of the well-known botanist Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli

Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli

Karl Wilhelm von Nägeli was a Swiss botanist. He studied cell division and pollination, but became known as the man who discouraged Gregor Mendel from further work on genetics.-Birth and education:...

 (1818–1891) at Freiburg

University of Freiburg

The University of Freiburg , sometimes referred to in English as the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, is a public research university located in Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.The university was founded in 1457 by the Habsburg dynasty as the...

, where he established the most advanced botanical laboratory at the time and directed many students.

Marriage and academic work

De Bary married Antonie Einert in 1861; they raised four children. In 1867, de Bary moved to the University of Halle to succeed the position of Professor Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal

Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal

Diederich von Schlechtendal was a German botanist born in Xanten. He was Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanical Gardens at the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg from 1833 until his death in 1866, and Editor of the botanical journal Linnaea.His most important work was in...

, who, with Hugo von Mohl, co-founded the pioneer botanical journal Botanische Zeitung. De Bary became its coeditor and later sole editor. As an editor of and contributor to the journal, he exercised great influence upon the development of botany. After the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871), de Bary was appointed professor of botany at the University of Strasbourg

University of Strasbourg

The University of Strasbourg in Strasbourg, Alsace, France, is the largest university in France, with about 43,000 students and over 4,000 researchers....

, founder of the Jardin botanique de l'Université de Strasbourg

Jardin botanique de l'Université de Strasbourg

The Jardin Botanique de l'Université de Strasbourg , also known as the Jardin botanique de Strasbourg and the Jardin botanique de l'Université Louis Pasteur, is a botanical garden and arboretum located at 28 rue Goethe, Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, Alsace, France...

, and also elected to be the first rector (president) of the reorganized university. He conducted much research in the university botanical institute, attracted many students from Europe and America, and made a large contribution to the development of botany.

Fungi and plant diseases

De Bary was devoted to the study of the life history of fungi. At that time, various fungi were still considered to arise through spontaneous generation. He proved that pathogenic fungi were not the products of cell contents of the affected plants and did not arise from the secretion of the sick cells.

In de Bary’s time, potato late blight had caused sweeping crop devastation and economic loss. He studied the pathogen Phytophthora infestans (formerly Peronospora infestans) and elucidated its life cycle. The origin of plant diseases was not known at that time. Much as Miles Joseph Berkeley

Miles Joseph Berkeley

Miles Joseph Berkeley was an English cryptogamist and clergyman, and one of the founders of the science of plant pathology....

 (1803–1889) had insisted in 1841 that the fungus found in potato blight was the cause of the disease, de Bary declared that the rust and smut fungi were the causes of the pathological changes in diseased plants. He concluded that Uredinales and Ustilaginales

Ustilaginales

The Ustilaginales are an order of fungi within the class Ustilaginomycetes. The order contains 8 families, 49 genera, and 851 species.Ustinaginales is also known and classified as the "smut fungi"...

 were parasites.

De Bary spent much time studying the morphology of fungi and noticed that certain forms that had been classified as separate species were actually successive stages of development of the same organism. De Bary studied the developmental history of Myxomycetes (slime molds), and thought it was necessary to reclassify the lower animals. He first coined the term Mycetozoa to include lower animals and slime molds. In his work on Myxomycetes (1858), he pointed out that at one stage of their life cycle (the plasmodial stage), they were little more than formless, motile masses of the substance that Félix Dujardin

Félix Dujardin

-External sources:* @ Encyclopædia Britannica Online...

 (1801–1860) had called sarcode (protoplasm

Protoplasm

Protoplasm is the living contents of a cell that is surrounded by a plasma membrane. It is a general term of the Cytoplasm . Protoplasm is composed of a mixture of small molecules such as ions, amino acids, monosaccharides and water, and macromolecules such as nucleic acids, proteins, lipids and...

). This is the fundamental basis of the protoplasmic theory of life.

De Bary was the first to demonstrate sexuality in fungi. In 1858, he had observed conjugation in the alga Spirogyra

Spirogyra

Spirogyra is a genus of filamentous green algae of the order Zygnematales, named for the helical or spiral arrangement of the chloroplasts that is diagnostic of the genus. It is commonly found in freshwater areas, and there are more than 400 species of Spirogyra in the world. Spirogyra measures...

, and in 1861, he described sexual reproduction in the fungus Peronospora sp. He saw the necessity of observing the whole life cycle of pathogens and attempted to follow it in the living host plants.

Peronosporeae

De Bary published his first work on fungi in 1861, and then spent more than 15 years studying Peronosporeae, particularly Phytophthora infestans (formerly Peronospora infestans) and Cystopus (Albugo), parasites of potato. In his published work in 1863 entitled "Recherches sur le developpement de quelques champignons parasites", he reported having inoculated spores of P. infestans on healthy potato leaves and observed the penetration of the leaf and the subsequent growth of the mycelium that affected the tissue, the formation of conidia, and the appearance of the characteristic black spots of the potato blight. He also did similar experiments on potato stalks and tubers. He watched conidia in the soil and their infection of the tubers, observing that mycelium could survive the cold winter in the tubers. From all these studies, he concluded that organisms could not be generated spontaneously.

Puccinia graminis

He did a thorough investigation on Puccinia graminis, the pathogen of rust of wheat, rye and other grains. He noticed that P. graminis produced reddish summer spores called "urediospore", and dark winter spores called "teleutospores". He inoculated sporidia from the winter spores of the wheat rust on the leaves of the "common barberry" (Berberis vulgaris

Berberis vulgaris

Berberis vulgaris /// is a shrub in the family Berberidaceae, native to central and southern Europe, northwest Africa and western Asia; it is also naturalised in northern Europe, including the British Isles and Scandinavia, and North America.It is a deciduous shrub growing up to 4 m high...

). The sporidia germinated and led to the formation of aecia with yellow spores, the familiar symptoms of infection on the barberry. De Bary then inoculated aecidiospores on moisture-retaining slides and then transferred them to the leaves of seedling of rye plants. In time, he observed the reddish summer spores appearing in the leaves. The sporidia from the winter spores germinated, but only on barberry. De Bary clearly demonstrated that P. graminis required different hosts during the different stages of its development (a phenomenon he called "heteroecism" in contrast to "autoecism", when development takes place only in one host). De Bary’s discovery explained why the eradication of the barberry plants had long been practiced as a control for rust.

Lichen

De Bary also studied the formation of 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...

s which are the result of an association between a fungus and an alga. He traced the stages through which they grew and reproduced and the adaptations that enabled them to survive drought and winter. He coined the word "symbiosis

Symbiosis

Symbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens...

" in 1879 in his monograph "Die Erscheinung der Symbiose" (Strasbourg, 1879) as "the living together of unlike organisms". He carefully studied the morphology of molds, yeasts, and fungi and basically established mycology as an independent science.

Conclusions

De Bary's concept and methods had a great impact on the growing field of bacteriology and botany. He published more than 100 research papers and influenced many students who later became distinguished botanists and microbiologist

Microbiologist

A microbiologist is a scientist who works in the field of microbiology. Microbiologists study organisms called microbes. Microbes can take the form of bacteria, viruses, fungi, and protists...

s such as Sergei Winogradsky

Sergei Winogradsky

Sergei Nikolaievich Winogradsky was a Ukrainian-Russian microbiologist, ecologist and soil scientist who pioneered the cycle of life concept. He discovered the first known form of lithotrophy during his research with Beggiatoa in 1887...

 (1856–1953), William Gilson Farlow

William Gilson Farlow

William Gilson Farlow was an American botanist, born in Boston, Massachusetts, and educated at Harvard , where, after several years of European study, he became adjunct professor of botany in 1874 and professor of cryptogamic botany in 1879.In 1899 he was president of the American Society of...

 (1844–1919), and Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet

Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet

Pierre-Marie-Alexis Millardet was a French botanist and mycologist born in Montmirey-la-Ville.He was a student at the Universities of Heidelberg and Freiberg, and later became a professor of botany at the Universities of Strasbourg , Nancy , and Bordeaux .Millardet is chiefly remembered for his...

(1838–1902). He was one of the most influential of the 19th century bioscientists. De Bary died of a tumor of the jaw, having undergone extensive surgery, on January 19, 1888 in Strasburg.