Note 87 — Chapter IV · History of Development of the Cell, Formation of Tissues, Molecular Structure of Organised Forms. 1840-1860.

Franz Unger was born in 1800 on the estate of Amthof, near Leutschach in South Steiermark, and was educated up to the age of sixteen in the Benedictine Monastery of Gratz. Having gone through the three years’ course of ‘philosophy,’ he turned his attention, by his father’s wish, to jurisprudence; but he abandoned this study in 1820, and became a student of medicine, first in Vienna, and afterwards in Prague. From the latter place he made a vacation tour in Germany, and formed the acquaintance of Oken, Carus, Rudolphi, and other men of science, and in 1825 of Jacquin and Endlicher, with the latter of whom he maintained an active correspondence on scientific subjects. Having taken his degree in 1827, he practised as a physician in Vienna till the year 1830, and after that date was medical official at Kitzbühl in the Tyrol. During these years he continued the botanical studies which he had commenced as a youth, and at Kitzbühl directed special attention to the diseases of plants, to palaeontological researches, and to enquiries into the influence of soil on the distribution of plants. At the end of 1835 he became Professor of Botany at the Johanneum in Gratz, and devoting himself there especially to the study of palaeontology, he soon became the most eminent authority on that subject. Having been made Professor of Vegetable Physiology in Vienna in 1849, he applied himself more to physiology and phytotomy. He retired from this position in 1866, and from that time forward lived as a private individual in Gratz, promoting scientific knowledge by the publication of popular treatises and the delivery of lectures. He died in 1870. Information respecting his personal character and his varied and copious labours in many departments of botanical science is given by Leitgeb in the ‘Botanische Zeitung’ of 1870, No. 16, and by Reyer, ‘Leben und Wirken des Naturhistoriker Unger,’ Gratz, 1871.