Heinrich Walter


Heinrich Karl Walter was a German-Russian botanist and eco-physiologist.

Life

Walter, the son of a doctor, was born in Odessa, Ukraine. He studied plant biology at the University of Odessa from 1915 to 1917. In 1918 he moved to the University of Dorpat, where he studied under Peter Claussen. In 1919 he studied at the University of Jena with Christian Ernst Stahl and Wilhelm Detmer, where he completed his Ph.D. In 1920, he worked at the Agricultural Research Institute in Halle, and then as a research assistant of Ludwig Jost at the University of Heidelberg.
In 1923, Walter worked as a lecturer at the university and he became an Associate Professor of Botany in 1927. In 1924, he married the daughter of the botanist Heinrich Schenck, Erna Walter, who also earned her doctorate in botany from the University of Heidelberg and was a research assistant of Ludwig Jost. In the following years, Walter received a Rockefeller Fellowship for the exploration of desert plants in with American botanist Forrest Shreve in Tucson, Arizona as well as with John Ernest Weaver, a plant ecologist in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1939, Walter became Director of the Botanical Institute of the Institute of Technology in Stuttgart. From 1933 to 1934, and again from 1937 to 1938, Walter made research trips to East and West Africa. In 1941, he became a tenured professor at the State University of Poznan, and in 1945 he worked at the Department of Botany at the Agricultural University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim, where Walter eventually retired and became an emeritus professor in 1966. From 1951 to 1955 he was a visiting professor of botany at the University of Ankara in Turkey. He died in Stuttgart in 1989.

Law of relative constancy of habitat

In 1953, Walter and Erna formulated the Law of relative constancy of habitat, which states that: If the climate within the residential district or area of a plant species is changing in a particular direction, this species moves into a habitat or biotope that compensates for the climate change.

Research achievements

Walter went on numerous research trips, on which he was most often accompanied by his wife, to almost all vegetation zones on the earth. He recorded his experiences and summarized his findings in many books. The sometimes very extensive works are often published in several editions, have been translated in part, and belong almost exclusively to the standard works of Geobotany and Ecology. Walter acquired extraordinary merits through the collaboration with Helmut Lieth in the published work "Climate Chart World Atlas". This work was a clear form of climate representation and received the highest international recognition.
The memoirs of Walter is an impressive document of the times and at the same time an informative source for the history of science. In the final chapter of this book, he also deals with the relationship of science and art and provides an opinion on the basic questions of scientific work.

Staff and students

During his time as a professor, Walter had numerous employees and students who themselves became professors later. Among others, some noteworthy scientists were: Hans Haas, Maximilian Steiner, Erich Oberdorfer, Karl Hans Divine, Heinz Ellenberg, Karlheinz Kreeb, Helmut Lieth, Wolfgang Haber, Helmut Freitag and Sigmar Breckle.

Publications

In German:
In English:
While writing the preface of many of his books, Walter quotes: "Das Laboratorium des Ökologen ist Gottes Natur Und sein Arbeitsfeld—die ganze Welt."