Otto Kuntze

Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze 1843 - 1907

Otto Carl Ernst Kuntze (June 23, 1843 - 1907) was a German botanist.

Biography

Otto Kuntze was born in Leipzig.

An apothecary in his early career, he published an essay entitled Pocket Fauna of Leipzig. Between 1863 and 1866 he worked as tradesman in Berlin and traveled through central Europe and Italy. From 1868 to 1873 he had his own factory for essential oils and attained a comfortable standard of living. Between 1874 and 1876, he traveled around the world: The Caribbean, USA, Japan, China, South East Asia, Arabian peninsula and Egypt. The journal of these travels was published as "Around the World" (1881). From 1876 to 1878 he studied Natural Science in Berlin and Leipzig and gained his doctorate in Freiburg with a monography of the genus Cinchona.

He edited the botanical collection from his world voyage encompassing 7,700 specimens in Berlin and Kew Gardens. The publication came as a shock to botany, since Kuntze had entirely revised taxonomy. His three-volume treatise, Revisio Generum Plantarum (1891) was widely rejected or deliberately ignored.

In 1886, Kuntze visited the Russian Near East and spent the 1887-1888 period on the Canary Islands. The results of both journeys became part of his main work, the Revisio. At the beginning of the 1890s he left for South America, of which he managed to see nearly all countries. In 1894, he visited the Southern African countries as well as the German colonies.

In the last years of his life, Kuntze moved permanently to Sanremo (Italy). His revolutionary ideas about botanic nomenclature created a conflict at the 2nd Congress of Botany, as a result of which the doors of the academic world were closed to him. He died in Sanremo two years later.

The standard author abbreviation Kuntze is used to indicate this individual as the author when citing a botanical name.^[1]

Biographical articles

• Barnhart, John Hendley (1913). "Otto Kuntze". Bulletin of the Charleston Museum. volume 9. pp. 65–68. 
• Urban, Ignaz, Notae Biographicae, Symbolae Antillanae 3:70,1902.
• Hemsley, W. B. (1907). "Dr. Otto Kuntze". Kew Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information. pp. 100–101. 
• Stafleu, Frans A. (1978). "Kuntze, Carl Ernst Otto". Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 15. pp. 268–269. 
• Zanoni, T.A. Otto Kuntze, Botanist. I. Biography, Bibliography and Travels. Brittonia 32: 551-571, 1980.

External links

• Botanicus - Revisio generum plantarum online
• Biography
• Comprehensive bibliography on WorldCat

References

1. ^ "Author Query". International Plant Names Index. http://www.ipni.org/ipni/authorsearchpage.do. 

Persondata
Name	Kuntze, Otto
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	June 23, 1843
Place of birth
Date of death	1907
Place of death