Johann Hedwig

Who was Johann Hedwig?

Johann Hedwig, also seen as Johannes Hedwig or Latinised as Joannis Hedwig, was a German botanist notable for his studies of mosses, in particular the observation of sexual reproduction in the cryptogams.

He was born in Romania, and studied medicine at the University of Leipzig, receiving an M.D. in 1759. He then practiced as a physician for the next twenty years, during which time he pursued botany as a hobby, collecting in the morning before work and then studying his accumulation in the evening. He also acquired a microscope and a small library.

Over time his publications attracted attention, and he eventually achieved both a professorship at Leipzig, and direction of the Leipzig Botanical Garden.

Skilled at both microscopy and biological illustration, he was able to identify moss antheridia and archegonia. He directly observed the germination of spores and formation of the protonema. He was less successful with other sporophytes, being unable to determine the life cycles of ferns or fungi, but he did make useful observations on the algae Chara and Spirogyra and he made it clear that he was not the first to get new plants from sowing the spores of mosses, C.