Oswald Heer

Oswald Heer was a Swiss naturalist and paleobotanist born August 31, 1809, in Niederuzwil, Canton of St. Gallen, Switzerland, who died September 27, 1883, in Lausanne, and who trained initially for the clergy at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, earned a doctorate in philosophy and medicine, and became professor of botany at the University of Zurich in 1851, directing its Old Botanical Garden. He pioneered the study of fossil plants, publishing Flora Tertiaria Helvetiae on Tertiary Swiss flora between 1855 and 1859, Die Urwelt der Schweiz in 1865, and the multi-volume Flora fossilis Arctica on Arctic fossil flora between 1868 and 1883, and he also examined lignite deposits across multiple continents and plant remains from prehistoric lake settlements. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1862, received the Wollaston Medal in 1874 and the Royal Medal in 1877, and geographical features including Heerodden cape and Oswaldfjellet mountain are named in his honor.