Johann Hedwig

Johann Hedwig (1730 to 1799) was a German botanist known for his studies of mosses and sometimes called the father of bryology. Born in Brașov in Transylvania, the son of a shoemaker, he grew up in poverty, became fascinated by mosses as a child, studied medicine at the University of Leipzig and took his medical degree in 1759. He then worked as a physician for about twenty years, including as a general practitioner in Chemnitz, where he took up botany as a hobby with a microscope given to him by Johann Christian Daniel von Schreber. He could identify and illustrate moss antheridia, archegonia and male gametes and observed the germination of spores and the formation of the protonema. In 1781 he moved to Leipzig and published his first major work in 1782; in 1786 he became an associate professor of medicine there, and in 1789 professor of botany and director of the botanical garden. His chief work, Species muscorum frondosorum, appeared in 1801 after his death and is the starting point for the nomenclature of nearly all mosses.