Eduard Fischer (mycologist)


Eduard Fischer was a Swiss botanist and mycologist.

Life

Fischer was the son of botanist Ludwig Fischer, a professor and director of the state botanic garden. Fischer studied at the University of Bern and graduated in 1883 with mushroom researcher Heinrich Anton de Bary in Strasbourg, with whom he studied Gasteromycetes. During further studies in Berlin during 1884–1885, he worked with Simon Schwendener, August Wilhelm Eichler and Paul Friedrich August Ascherson. In 1885 Fischer was appointed as a lecturer at the University of Bern; 1893, he was promoted to associate professor. From 1897 to 1933 he was professor of botany and general biology at the university, and succeeded his father as director of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Institute in Berne.
In 1899, Fischer married Johanna Gruner, who came from a scholarly family. He died in Berne on 18 November 1939, aged 78. He was the father of the pianist Kurt von Fischer.

Work

Fischer produced major monographs for central Europe of various ascomycete and basidiomycete groups, including rusts. Fischer encouraged the plant pathologist Arthur Jaczewski to study mycology. His graduate students included the Lithuanian-born American physician Lydia Rabinowitsch, and the mycologist Ernst Albert Gäumann. Fischer became a member of the Linnean Society of London in 1932.

Honors