István László Endlicher

* Bratislava, June 24, 1804 – † Vienna, March 28, 1849 / botanist, historian, university professor, royal government advisor ; ; His father was János Endlicher, a Moravian-born physician from Bratislava, and his mother was Julianna Janusch. He began his school studies in his hometown, then studied philosophy and theology at the archbishop's seminary in Vienna. In 1823, he received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Pest. In 1828, he was employed at the Vienna court library, where he dealt with ancient Latin classics, medieval Latin authors, the Chinese language (he wrote the first Chinese language book in German) and Hungarian historical sources. He published two law books from the Admont Codex154 dating from the time of Stephen I. His interest increasingly turned towards botany. In 1836 he became the keeper of the botanical collection of the Vienna Court Museum of Natural History. His new plant system was universally acclaimed. ; Although Endlicher's system was based on erroneous assumptions regarding the growth patterns of different species of vegetation, it organized the lower vascular families in a relatively modern manner and was for a time generally accepted on the European continent. In his work Genera Plantarum… (Genera of Plants Grouped in Natural Order), he presented his system, in which he divided the plant kingdom into thallophytes (colonial plants, including algae, fungi, and lichens) and cormophytes (stem plants, including algae, ferns, and seed plants). In 1840 he was appointed professor of botany and director of the botanical garden at the University of Vienna. He was a member of the Austrian and German parliaments. He had almost daily access to Emperor Ferdinand V for ten years and was therefore not sympathetic to the revolutionary ideas of 1848. He fled Vienna due to the actions of the anti-Habsburg youth and only returned in the late autumn of 1848. However, due to his research into Hungarian historical sources, the court accused him of being pro-Hungarian. His modest financial resources were exhausted by the purchase of botanical collections and books, and the publication of his own and other people's writings, so in despair he poisoned himself with strychnine. He had previously donated his valuable library and plant collection to the state. ; ; His main works: ; Anonymi Belae Regis notarii de gestis Hungarorum liber, 1827, ; Flora Posoniensis, 1830, ; Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita, 1838–1840, ; Grundzüge einer neuen Theorie der Pflanzenzeugung, 1838, Iconographia generum plantarum, 1838–1840, ; Rerum Hungaricarum Monumenta Arpadiana, 1849.